


The Time May Come

by riddlemethistoo



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018), Chilling Adventures of Sabrina - Sarah Rees Brennan
Genre: F/M, Fake Marriage, Fluff, M/M, Multi, Pining, Polyamory, Slow Burn, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:14:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 50,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22086238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riddlemethistoo/pseuds/riddlemethistoo
Summary: When Nicholas Scratch, recently returned from hell and not dealing well, finds himself falling through time to a very weird future where he's settled down, he's… actually pretty into it.
Relationships: Harvey Kinkle/Nicholas Scratch, Harvey Kinkle/Nicholas Scratch/Sabrina Spellman, Harvey Kinkle/Sabrina Spellman, Nicholas Scratch/Sabrina Spellman, Zelda Spellman/Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith
Comments: 151
Kudos: 398





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I assume Nick will get out of hell, then be going through it and mess up everything in his life, because TV! Starting from that assumption and inspired by JediAnnieScrambler and Sarah Rees Brennan's newest Sabrina book because unholy hell that sure did seem to be where things were going! (Spoilers for the events of the book.) So I got this plot bunny...

Nicholas Scratch woke up in the certain knowledge he’d traveled through time. He’d read of such occurrences, and this matched up with the descriptions. He had the distinct impression he wasn't where he was supposed to be. 

Nick’s heart tightened like a fist at the thought of hell. But no, no, no, he was out, they’d got him out, he wasn’t going back.

So, the future. He felt fairly calm about the situation. Anomalies in time could be corrected. Nick was in no rush. 

The last thing Nick remembered, he’d been in the woods at night, hurled through a burning chasm by a snarling demon. The mortals were yelling, and Sabrina was nowhere in sight. It was his usual terrible life.

This was a huge improvement. Nick was lying in a vast soft bed with a book open on his chest. Morning light was filtering through the tall windows, turning the pale grey walls iridescent. In the glowing sunrise, he saw Sabrina spinning by an ebony dresser in front of a large cheval glass. As she spun her clothes changed from a dark power suit to a blood-red woolen dress.

She hadn’t changed much. Their kind didn’t. But there was an added stillness to her, as though she had learned not to let much ruffle the waters of her being. A certain poise, suggesting contained power. Even more power than she’d had before. 

That was hot. 

“Hey, babe,” Nick murmured, on impulse.

He was in a bedroom and she was getting dressed. Surely, somehow, he’d fixed everything that had been broken since the lies and hell. He wanted to believe he had.

She tossed a look over her shoulder at him, a whirl of white curling hair, then her dark eyes. Nobody was as intense as his girl. 

When she moved away from the dresser he saw she’d knocked over silver-framed pictures and a perfume bottle. Sabrina was graceful when she was dancing, but sometimes she moved without thinking something might be in her way, like a beautiful cyclone.

“Hey, you’re awake,” she said, sounding surprised but sweet. There was warmth in her voice, and none of the strain of the last months.

“With you to wake up to, Spellman, how could I not be?”

“I don’t know, Nick, you seem to manage it most days,” Sabrina laughed.

He woke up with her most days. Nick held the thought of that in his mind, a man with a jewel suddenly fallen into his hand, like a priceless apple.

Against all expectation, his future was bright.

Sabrina came toward the bed, still with that fierce light in her face. When he reached for her hand, her fingers curled around his.

He tried to pull her down into bed with him. She resisted, so he didn’t persist, but there was laughter in her dark eyes. 

“You know I can’t, Nick,” she told him. “I’m serious.”

He sat up and caught the crimson of her lips with his own. “You usually are,” he said. “But let me persuade you to smile.”

She did smile, lips curling against his, wicked as well as sweet, and he got his hand wrapped about the back of her neck, tugging her down a little, and he felt the catch of her breath against his lips and thought maybe she could be persuaded…

But then.

“I really have to go,” she said. “It’s important.”

He knew what it sounded like when she was determined, and he knew she was powerful beyond his dreams, chosen by fate, and he shouldn’t get in the way of that. He kissed her one last time. She kissed him back, but with finality. 

“Come back to me,” he said, as he hadn’t let himself say for months.

“Of course, I love you,” she returned, and she left with a wave and a twirl in her step, as though he’d brightened her day the way she did his.

“I love you too,” he said, soft and stunned, to the closed door.

He rolled over in the big bed, on the piles of soft pillows, and read the book that’d been lying on his chest. It was extremely interesting. 

When he was done, he left the bed, humming, and remembered to right the perfume bottle.

That was the source of the noise that had woken Nick up, when Sabrina knocked against the furniture. There were actually several pictures lying face down on their dresser. Nick picked one up, the silver frame cool in his hands. In the picture Sabrina was wearing a white lace dress. Above the lace she was shining like a lamp. The mortal, looking a little older than he did where Nick came from, was beaming a big goofy grin like the moron he was. He wore a tux and held Sabrina in his arms on the steps of a mortal church. They were both obviously, radiantly happy.

Oh. There it was. 

In a small hollow place under Nick’s ribs, he felt a small hope sink, like a coin thrown uselessly into a wishing well that had no magic left.

No big surprise. He’d never thought things would end any other way. Not really.

Only that begged the question, what was Nick even doing here?

How far in the future was Nick? Was the mortal _dead_? He couldn’t be. Sabrina had looked all right, her eyes clear and calm and without a shadow in their depths. Not wrecked, the way she would be. No matter how long ago the mortal had died, Nick knew she wouldn’t look the same, not ever again.

So… were they sneaking around behind the mortal’s back? Nick saw his own face go shocked in the mirror, and retreated from the unfamiliar expression. Also from the sight of his hair, which was completely out of control.

Since, judging by the picture, they were in Sabrina and the mortal’s marital home, Nick presumed there wouldn’t be any useful hair products. A search of the bathroom proved him correct. He wondered where he kept his hair product in the future, but it wasn’t his biggest problem right now. 

Deceiving the mortal didn’t seem like something Sabrina would do, but people changed over the years. Women had needs. The Weird Sisters had told Nick many horror stories of the ineptness of mortal men in bed, all premature this and dysfunction that, everything going too fast when the mortals were young and stopping entirely when they were older. Apparently, you got maybe one moment with mortals that was good, and you might blink and miss it. Sabrina shouldn’t endure such things without support. 

Nick had no illusions about his own character. If Sabrina came to him and told him that her needs weren’t being met, Nick would definitely go for it.

The mortal would be _devastated_ when he found out. 

Maybe Nick should leave. 

Nick came down the steps cautiously. There was a square window over the stairs, spilling light everywhere. This was a very bright house, though the cursed shoes in the corridor and twined iron and thorn wreaths on every door reassured Nick it was still a witch house. It was nice, but Nick probably shouldn’t be here. 

Nick felt adrift. He didn’t know where he was supposed to go, in the future, when he wasn’t here having his sleazy extramarital affair. 

As he reached the bottom of the stairs, the rich smell of coffee lured him toward an open door.

The coffee smell was coming from a kitchen. The room didn’t look like any kitchen Nick had ever seen before, but he hadn’t seen many and he was fairly confident about the identification. There was an oven. There was an island with a white marble countertop. 

And the mortal was there. 

He looked older, but Nick found it hard to work out how old mortals were. Like, it was older every second with that lot, right? Didn’t have grey hair, but then they dyed their hair sometimes. He was moving with ease, but how they physically responded to age varied. Maybe somewhere around thirty? Twenty? Forty? Nick didn’t feel confident about choosing a decade.

The mortal didn’t look decrepit yet. He actually looked… all right, Nick thought grudgingly. He was—ugh—even taller, and broader across the shoulders, so he must’ve had to find another size up in voluminous and hideous flannel shirts. Sabrina had finally come to her senses and forced him to do something to make his hair acceptable, Nick saw. She mustn’t have been able to do anything about the shirts. Nick was sure Sabrina’d tried her best. It wasn’t her fault the mortal was so stubborn.

The mortal was standing framed in a bay window and the morning light made welcome all through this house. He was wearing his giant headphones and singing under his breath, regarding the large easel set up before him with a thoughtful air. There was a paintbrush, dipped with indigo, in his hand, and rings on his fingers that he hadn’t worn before. He didn’t look so different. He still liked to draw little pictures and sing little songs.

He looked more content, maybe. He didn’t look like someone whose whole world was about to end. 

Nick held onto the doorframe, torn for a minute between the urge to leave and be anywhere else, away from this situation, and the urge to throw his terrible knowledge in the mortal’s face. _You think you got everything you always wanted, right? Her with you, and me gone._

The moment of hesitation took the decision out of Nick’s hands. The mortal checked his movement toward the easel, pulled his dumb giant headphones down from his ears, looked over at Nick and smiled.

“Oh, hey,” he said. “You’re here.”

This turned Nick’s dire announcement into a casual observation. Which was annoying. But when had the mortal ever failed to be annoying?

“I was in bed,” declared Nick. “ _With Sabrina_.”

The taunt failed to land. 

“Yeah?” The mortal didn’t even have the decency to sound particularly surprised. “She’s already gone to the council meeting. You know, she didn’t eat breakfast.”

Nick had been led to understand that it was a big deal when a mortal discovered another man in bed with his wife. But no, apparently it was a good time to talk about breakfast. He squinted at the mortal and tried to make sense of him, which never worked. 

“Want coffee?” the mortal asked.

Nick teleported instantly to the kitchen island. “Yes I do!”

The mortal began to rattle around in the cupboards. There was already a smell of coffee coming from a complicated-looking machine. Nick was concerned about how one made the machine obey, but the mortal got out a cup and managed to produce results quickly. Then he held out the cup to Nick, rather than keeping it. Nick accepted the coffee warily. 

Even in Nick’s time, Nick and Sabrina were trying to be friends again. Perhaps the mortal believed Nick and Sabrina were just friends now, and the mortal was prepared to accept it. To the point of welcoming Nick into his home.

Nick studied the mortal over the rim of his coffee cup. Nick did wrong things all the time, so why should that bother him?

“To be clear,” Nick said. “I did my best to convince Sabrina to engage in carnal delights with me this very morning.”

The mortal snorted. “Yeah, well, you need to learn to wake up earlier.” 

Nick choked on his coffee.

“You seem kind of dazed,” the mortal observed.

“It’s early,” said Nick, which was a fact. The mortal couldn’t argue with facts.

The mortal hummed as though he might try, and regarded Nick with a suspicious air. Nick stared at him impassively. Nick refused to be found out by the mortal, who Nick could out-think in his sleep. It was a question of pride. 

“Were you up late reading?” the mortal asked at last.

“That sounds like me,” Nick admitted.

The mortal hummed again, this time less argumentatively. “It does, nerd, doesn’t it?”

Nick froze. Harvey never called him that anymore, not since he’d decided he wanted nothing further to do with Nick. But in the future, the mortal was nice to him. Nick got coffee and called by the pet name again. 

Was it possible… the mortal was aware Nick was sleeping with Sabrina? That he didn’t mind?

Perhaps he’d realized that he couldn’t satisfy Sabrina himself, and had made this compromise, in order to keep Sabrina with him. 

How terrible were mortals in bed? Nick had never had the dubious pleasure, but he’d given the matter some thought. If it was that awful, surely the Weird Sisters wouldn’t keep doing it. Maybe this mortal was particularly bad? Nick regarded Harvey with fascinated horror. 

Nick had no desire to renew that ill-fated friendship. There was no point. It would only be a matter of time until the mortal decided Nick was evil and worthless and righteously discarded him. But if the mortal was laboring under the delusion they were friends again, Nick could go along with it for now. In a cold and distant manner.

“What were you reading?” asked the mortal, leaning against the kitchen island.

It was good for the mortal to be educated, so Nick told him about the book at length. The mortal nodded and made several comments that showed he was listening, smiling a little the way he used to. The mortal definitely did think they were friends again. He was being startlingly calm about Nick being Sabrina’s sexual plaything. 

After a while, Nick realized he’d been talking for some time, the mortal was probably as bored as the Weird Sisters used to get, and he should make excuses about errands and leave.

“—So I require the sequel,” Nick concluded. “And I also require hair product.” 

“Why?” asked the mortal. “It looks nice.”

Harvey reached out, and lightly touched Nick’s hair. Nick stared at him in shock, then pulled himself together and leaned away, then remembered he was in the future and leaned in slightly in case that was what he should do. By now the mortal was looking at him oddly, because Nick was doing an impression of a pendulum.

Nick could tell when people were attracted to him. It was just another sense, like hearing a bell chime when you walked near somebody. Sometimes it was like walking through a world ringing with bells. It happened a lot, so he’d learned to discern the difference between people who were in with zero intention of acting on it (Zelda Spellman), people who were in and perhaps persuadable (Sabrina), and people who were all the way in and might leap at any moment (Dorcas, the Antipope).

The mortal wasn’t attracted to him. Which was fine with Nick, obviously. He didn’t care. The mortal was an idiot with no taste. Whatever. It wasn’t like the mortal was exclusively into girls the way Luke Chalfant had been exclusively into guys, either. It was weirder than that. Nick had thought for a while the mortal was perhaps only into Sabrina, imprinted on her like a baby animal born to love only their first sight. But then he’d witnessed the mortal with Sabrina’s and Harvey’s friend Roz, and heard Roz’s bells ringing in a deafening clamor for the mortal, and was surprised to discern a faint response from the mortal, like bells faraway. 

But that had been that. Absolutely nothing and no-one else. It appeared to be the way he was built. It wasn’t the only strange thing about the mortal. It wasn’t even in the top ten strangest things. 

But as the mortal was inexplicably stroking Nick’s awful curl situation, fingertips moving so gently it barely stirred his hair, Nick did sense something different. He must be reading this wrong, but it was… almost like a chime of bells. 

_Am I… sleeping with both of them?_ Nick thought. _I can’t be. That’s impossible. But… am I?_

If Sabrina came to him and said her needs weren’t being met but the mortal had to be involved due to Sabrina’s insistent attachment to him, what would Nick say? Nick was willing to put up with a lot, for Sabrina’s sake. 

Experimentally, Nick sidled closer to the mortal. Harvey didn’t move away. Nick edged closer still, until his mouth was level with the mortal’s jaw. 

“Little mortal love,” Nick murmured against Harvey’s skin. 

It came out wrong, softer and less casual than he’d intended. The mortal laughed.

“Don’t call me that,” the mortal returned. “You know I hate that.”

Nick opened his lips to snarl that of course he knew, that it was a joke, that the mortal was an idiot, when the mortal dipped his head down and kissed Nick on his startled mouth. The mortal was smiling his little private smile. Nick could feel the subtle curve pressed against his lips, like a secret the mortal trusted him with. The mortal lingered for a moment in the kiss, then began to pull away.

Nick had had more than enough of this _bullshit_. 

He lunged. He seized the collar of the mortal’s awful shirt, and kissed him savagely. He dragged the mortal backward, toward the kitchen island. Nick wanted him cornered. He kissed the mortal, a witch’s kiss, not brooking disobedience, ocean deep and storm hungry. He was demanding and merciless and ravenous, until he realized something. 

The mortal was coming with him, not struggling. The mortal was still smiling. 

When Nick fetched up against the kitchen island, he slid onto it, and the mortal slotted in between Nick’s legs, tipping his head back as Nick kissed him. Kissing Nick in return, open-mouthed, sweet and eager.

“What do you want me to call you?” Nick purred, beginning to smile back and getting hold of the mortal’s T-shirt, starting to cling.

“My name,” said Harvey.

“Mmm, no,” Nick whispered. “Can’t remember it.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> contains lots of Narvey and lots of spoilers for the second book!

“Is that right,” Harvey returned, indulgent, then jolted when Nick bit down on his lower lip. “ _God_.”

He was always swearing, always. It was endless. He returned the bite with a little kiss, terribly gentle, soothing as though Nick was the one who’d been hurt. 

“Oh, I want…” Nick said, drunk on blasphemy and sweetness. “I want to hear you call on the false god over and over again, I want—”

The mortal, with his immediate and usual contrariness, leaned away from Nick and stopped kissing him entirely. 

Why had nobody _trained_ this mortal? It was shocking the way he carried on, not sleeping with people all the time.

“No,” Nick told him, trying to sound kind but firm. “Don’t do that… don’t go away. Don’t. Don't.”

He wondered if he should say something vile and degrading like 'please,' but he worried the last 'don't' hadn't sounded very firm, and might have conveyed the sentiment. The mortal didn't appear to notice Nick had embarrassed himself.

“Did you wake up early for me?” the mortal asked, as if stricken by a sudden pleasant thought. 

Nick was deeply annoyed by the sudden lack of kissing in order to ask random questions Nick couldn’t answer and didn’t see the purpose of.

He didn’t snap at the mortal, because the mortal still had his face lifted up to Nick’s, and his face was shining. He was absurdly sweet when he was happy, but the problem was the mortal had a thousand million feelings and it was easy to hurt them, and when he was hurt it was unbearable. 

Like the time his brother died, and the mortal’s misery had driven poor generous-hearted Sabrina to extreme acts of necromancy in order to make him happy again. The mortal wasn’t even grateful.

It had long been Nick’s personal opinion that the mortal was spoiled rotten, which led to the mortal constantly and flatly refusing to obey the people with magic powers who could protect him. The mortal didn’t know his place. 

When Nick considered the matter, he saw there was no real need to be harsh. Probably the mortal had learned his lesson sometime in the intervening years and would be a good mortal from now on. Clearly, he’d come around on some important issues. 

It would be smarter to encourage the mortal to keep behaving by providing him with positive reinforcement. On several hideous occasions, Father Blackwood had insisted on having man-to-man chats with Nick, and once he’d mentioned seducing mortals via gifts as well as magic. Apparently all mortals liked flowers and diamonds. Prudence had confirmed this weird news about the flowers. Nick filed this information away in case it might be useful, and then the mortal was impossible, so Nick had decided it never would be.

But now the mortal was sorry for being impossible, Nick was prepared to be forgiving. To a reasonable degree.

He had come downstairs because he’d seen the mortal’s picture. In a way, it was true Nick was here because of the mortal. 

Nick nodded, cautiously.

“I’ll miss you,” the mortal added.

Why would he? That was stupid, Nick wasn’t going anywhere. The thought of that, being missed, was odd and unfamiliar like most things about this mortal… but it wasn’t unpleasant. Nick didn’t think anyone had ever missed Nick before, even hypothetically. Maybe Sabrina, when he was in hell? She’d gone to a lot of trouble to get him back. But she hadn’t said it.

Nobody had ever said it to him, but Nick understood what it meant.

If Nick went away, the mortal would be sorry he was gone and would wish Nick to come back again. So they could be together.

“I…” Nick said, in a small voice, almost lost against the mortal’s hair: “I miss you.”

Not… a lot, or anything. They were friends for a few days, nothing that mattered much, especially in Nick’s long life. The only thing memorable was the contrast, Nick supposed, to the rest of that life. Like a night bird accidentally flying through a window into a house. Being used to wild wings in darkness, and shocked by this brief, unlooked-for interruption. There was no place for him in that light and warmth. But he remembered it. 

At odd times, little things recurred. The mortal climbing out of his stupid truck, smiling as if he was pleased Nick was there and asking if Nick wanted to—hang out, as though Nick was going to play a video game with him. Not wishing for anything but company. When Nick was annoyed with people at the Academy, or tired, and he thought irritably: I don’t want this. I want to go be with my mortal. It was just a feeling. Nick was used to hiding feelings, because witches shouldn’t have them.

Clearly reading the guilty confession as reciprocated affection—of course the mortal would be into weird stuff—the mortal smiled some more. 

“Kiss me,” Nick ordered, then held his breath, waiting to be denied and not understand why. 

The mortal kissed Nick, with his stupid curving mouth, happy to be affectionate with each other in the sunshine. Nick’s arms wrapped around the mortal’s neck, holding fast. He didn’t have to let go. The mortal wouldn’t send him away again, because finally the mortal wanted something Nick could give.

Yeah, Nick decided. The stupid mortal could have all the flowers and diamonds he wanted.

"Little mortal love," he sighed into his mouth, at which the idiot mortal tried to pull away again, what the heaven was wrong with him?

"Seriously, I'm much taller than you."

"Not much!" Nick said indignantly.

"I can't have this conversation again," said Harvey, which was ridiculous, as he was the one insisting on having this conversation rather than just being reasonable and sleeping with Nick immediately. 

The only thing that saved Harvey from Nick's extreme wrath was the sly way he--to get out of trouble, no doubt, Nick was onto him--kissed Nick again. Nick wished his own shirt gone, failed to make it dematerialize, then hissed impatiently and wrenched the shirt off. He resented the interrupted kissing, but the mortal helped Nick remove his shirt. The mortal’s palm curved warm against Nick’s shoulderblade as their mouths slid together again, slick and hot. Through gasps and clothing interruptions, the mortal fitted words between kisses, swearing again: “Call me fucking anything, except--”

“Fuck _me_ , farm boy,” Nick urged against his mouth. 

The mortal surged forward and pushed Nick down. Nick, happy to go but disinclined to lose contact for even a second, kept his grip on Harvey’s shirt and his hair. He used both to pull him down. The granite was cool under Nick's back, and the mortal's warmth was somewhat impeded by the way he was still wearing two shirts. And trying to pull away again. One thing hadn't changed, in the future. Nick had to do everything around here.

Harvey was blinking down at him, perplexed for some reason. “On the kitchen island?”

It _was_ strange here, so bright with no sex demons in sight, but if Harvey was complaining about the lack of sex demons then Nick had seriously misjudged his man. Still, it was the future. Maybe the mortal had got more normal. Should Nick offer sex demons?

“Yes,” tried Nick, instead. That must have been right, because the mortal rewarded him with another slow sweet kiss, but then he stopped again, murmuring some protesting nonsense.

An idea occurred. This was about consent, probably, Nick thought. The mortal banged on about that without cease. Nick should make himself clear.

“Yes,” he told the mortal again. “Yes, yes, yes, _please_ , yes. I want you to. I think about it constantly. I can’t stop. I think about it when I’m _reading_. Come here, and this time stay.”

The mortal came at Nick’s request, which was so good, he was finally being a good mortal, and Nick paused between kisses to get the mortal's shirt unbuttoned. He wrenched the shirt off the mortal's shoulders--hello, shoulders--tore it all the way off, and dropped it on the floor. While the mortal was occupied trailing sweet small kisses down his neck, he sketched a swift shape in the bright air, red sparks flying down to the awful shirt.

Then Nick got his wrist slammed down on the kitchen island. 

"Hey," Harvey said, with conviction. "No. No more burning my stuff."

Nick was ready to argue that some things--not witches, but horrible shirts--deserved burning, but he was extremely distracted by Harvey removing his hand, but leaving Nick's wrist held pinned in place. By a loop of magic, shining with strange light. Not the soothing scarlet of small spells, or the white and blue incandescence of balefire, but golden, celestial light. Around Nick's wrist. Nick stared up at Harvey, feeling his eyes go wide. That was new.

Witch-hunter, he thought, and remembered the stories the other Academy students had told, about the time the witch-hunters came and burned them in the reconsecrated church. The holy fire, reserved for celestial beings who could reduce the sinful to ash. But Nick wasn't burning.

Harvey pulled his fingers through his own untidy hair, raising an eyebrow. He didn't look like a nightmare from a witch child's story. He looked grouchy and well-kissed. "Try to burn my shirt again and I'll do both wrists. Do you want that?"

“Oh, _yes_ ,” said Nick, a dark thrill running to his bones as the fire shimmered around his wrist. “Yes. Next time. This time, let me touch you.”

He was allowed, now. Wasn’t he?

He touched the ends of the mortal’s untidy hair, the line of his cheekbone, hesitating. The mortal kissed his palm. That was permission, welcome. Wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?

He dragged his free hand frantically over as much of the mortal as he could reach. Fingers pulling that messy hair hard, knuckles pressing against the edge of that mouth, nails along the throat and fingertips greedily tracing the newly muscular curve of a shoulder under the T-shirt the mortal was still unfortunately wearing. Palm dragging down the mortal’s chest, pausing where the mortal gave a breath that wanted to be a cry, then finally curling his fingers around the mortal’s belt buckle. First Nick got a solid grip on it, so he could pull the mortal in tight, both of them jolting at the contact, then he began to unbuckle it. Fortunately, he was entirely able to do that one-handed. The mortal made a small sound, and pressed his mouth against Nick's ear, a kiss, then a strained whisper.

“We shouldn’t,” the mortal said, helplessly.

“We shouldn’t,” Nick agreed, low. “Oh, we shouldn’t. Not one of the army of angels and a wicked witch. But we will.”

"No, I mean really, we shouldn't," said the mortal, and tried to bat Nick's hand away. 

"But," Nick argued. "But I said yes!"

"Yeah, you said it like forty times," said Harvey.

Oh no, were there rules about how many times to consent? Had he exceeded the limit, why were mortals like this?

“Hey. It’s always good to hear,” said the mortal, in the soft voice he used for his friends, that he didn't use on Nick. 

“I can—I can keep saying it,” said Nick. “Do whatever you want to me. Now. I’ll like it. I swear I will, I swear—”

He turned his face into Harvey's and the mortal made a lovely, surrendering sound and kissed him, the kiss going wilder and deeper than any kiss before. Nick still had hold of his belt buckle. Nick was about to get Harvey out of his jeans and finally see for himself exactly how terrible mortal sex was, when the mortal—for no reason at all—pulled his mouth away. Nick whined and chased his mouth, while the mortal held Nick’s shoulder down and dragged in several breaths, chest shuddering against Nick’s. It was senseless. He wanted it as much as Nick did, Nick could tell that much, but he still made them stop.

“No,” said the mortal. He touched Nick's wrist, and the celestial bond vanished like light passing on water. “You know we can’t. She’ll be here any minute.”

Nick banged his head against the kitchen island. Maybe all the reports of mortals in the sack were mythical, because nobody ever managed to get them into bed.

When he opened his eyes he saw the mortal’s gaze devouring the sight of Nick on his back, mouth ravished and body still shivering with the desire to be ravished too. Nick levered himself up on one elbow and locked gazes with the mortal, willing him to return.

Harvey threw Nick's own shirt at him, which was the opposite of what Nick wanted, thank you.

"Ugh," said Nick, reduced to sounds. This was the mortal's fault. Nick's vocabulary was excellent.

"Yeah, yeah," said Harvey. "Being made to wear a shirt in your own home, the horror, mortals are so dreadful, my heart bleeds, put it on."

His own home, Nick thought as Harvey reached down and picked up his shirt from the floor. Nick made an urgent noise of protest, and Harvey sighed and knotted the flannel shirt around his waist rather than putting it back on. 

So Sabrina and Harvey had actually moved Nick in. The immensity of that made Nick obey and pull on on his shirt, sliding off the kitchen island and onto a stool as he considered matters further. They were meant to wait for someone. Sabrina, naturally. 

Okay, fine, Nick thought, forcing himself to concentrate past the intense frustration. So they were having sex, but only when Sabrina was there. Kinky, so Nick was in. Made sense for the mortal, because he was in love with Sabrina and sex and love were all mixed up for him.

The important facts, namely the sex Nick was having with both Sabrina and the mortal, were established. He couldn’t believe he was Harvey and Sabrina’s sexual plaything. And apparently such a great one that he'd been moved in. 

Nick gave himself props for being sexy and awesome, which he’d known he was already. He hadn’t realized it was to this extent. Congratulations to his future self on pulling off this tremendous coup, and also condolences to his future self, because Nick wasn’t going back to the past. 

He had no confidence that he could pull this off twice. So he was stealing his future self’s life. Sucked to be that guy. Every Nick for himself. 

Future Nick could just cope with the holy mess that was Nick’s current life, if he was so great. Let Future Nick deal with the mortal who hated him and the ex-girlfriend who was so disappointed in him. Nick was staying here, being a sexual plaything--who oddly nobody would have sex with, but Sabrina was coming back, and then they would. Nick nodded to himself with resolve.

"You are being supremely weird this morning," said Harvey. "Even for you." 

Quick, quick, Nick ordered his usually fast-thinking mind. Don't let him know you're from the past. Allay suspicion. Say something that you would never say.

“I love you!” he exclaimed, and froze.

Mostly Nick felt assured of his intelligence. But there were moments he had his doubts.

“I love you too,” the mortal replied. 

He what!

The mortal’s eyes narrowed. “Nick, are you drunk?”

And what were those two sentences supposed to mean, put together? 

“You are sending very mixed messages here, mortal!” Nick snapped. “I hope you know your behavior isn’t encouraging anyone to verbally express their affection.”

“All right, nerd,” said Harvey. If he’d been speaking to anyone else, Nick would have unhesitatingly classified his tone as fond. “Usually you only say that kind of thing when you’re drunk, that’s all.”

“I say what?” Nick said blankly. “When?”

What was that supposed to mean? He didn’t believe any Nick in any future would ever say something demented like that. And certainly he hoped Nick in the future didn’t say things like that while drunk, because the mortal’s father was a drunk and the mortal looked wretched about it sometimes.

Right now, the mortal’s expression was mostly bewildered, but there was an edge in the confusion that might become misery. Nick bit his lip.

“Does that… bother you?” Nick asked.

“It, uh,” said Harvey. “It’s not my favorite thing you do. But you’ve been through stuff. And I love you. So. I get it. I think.”

Nick wished that Nick got it, but the mortal was being typically inarticulate and hadn’t explained anything properly.

Except he’d said it. Twice now. Once without prompting of any kind.

Was Nick ensorceling him? No, surely Sabrina would never allow that. And Nick wasn’t… he wasn’t good, but even in a strange unknowable future, surely Nick wouldn’t. He’d never liked the idea of doing that, not to anyone. Somehow it would be worse, with this mortal.

He knew nothing showed on his face, because Nick didn’t let it show on his face when he felt unhappy and lost. What was he supposed to do, go around looking like that all the time?

Nevertheless, while Nick was staring at his hands and his coffee cup, the mortal came back around to the right side of the kitchen island. Nick felt the mortal’s hand, careful and gentle as if he needed to be either of those things with Nick, pushing Nick’s hair off his face. He didn’t understand how he’d got the mortal to come back, or what would make him stay.

“Hey,” said Harvey. “Don’t look like that.”

The mortal still had his hand in Nick’s hair, and Nick’s head ended up on his shoulder. Nick was amenable. The mortal had a throat on him. Nick had noticed. Well, he couldn’t help noticing, since the throat was eye-level. The mortal was stupid tall. 

“Tell me again,” Nick said, low.

“Tell you what?” 

“You know. The thing.” A blank stare. “ _I love you_ ,” Nick prompted, very annoyed.

“I love you, too,” the mortal murmured. “But what did you want me to tell you?”

Nick put up with so much. 

He leaned in and bit the long soft line of the mortal’s throat, lightly in case Harvey didn’t like that, and felt the mortal shiver, just a little, under the sting of teeth. Oh, Nick thought, pleased. 

“What is your favorite thing I do?” Nick purred in the mortal’s ear.

“I like it when you talk about books,” said Harvey, and pushed him gently away.

“I do that all the time! I am trying to turn this conversation sexual,” Nick said severely. “Can you not co-operate even a little bit?”

“No,” said Harvey. 

The mortal certainly didn’t seem ensorceled, because Nick would’ve ensorceled him to be more biddable than this!

The mortal went away again for no good reason. Nick glared discontentedly at the kitchen island, addressing his mind to this problem. Something strange was going on.

He’d already worked out they were having sex. And the mortal was very weird about sex. It wasn’t just the insistence about consent, but he thought there should be feelings involved. 

The mortal probably _did_ think he loved Nick. 

Nick began to grin. Cute. 

The mortal was being an idiot, of course, but what was new there? This particular stupidity hurt significantly less than all the rejection and judgement and hideous attempts at monogamy. Nick would allow it. Nick wondered when he'd been moved in, and if this was a recent thing. How long had it taken Nick to persuade the mortal into this delusion? Had Harvey wanted to wait until marriage--oh, that would be just like him, how unspeakably horrific!--and then Sabrina had come running to Nick, a damsel in grave sexual distress, immediately after a disastrous wedding night, or what?

"So just refresh my memory," said Nick. "How soon after the wedding--"

Harvey was pulling food out of cupboards. Nick was apparently going to be cooked for. This being a sexual plaything business had no downsides. He answered absently, clearly only half listening to Nick: "Which one?"

Urgent calm descended upon Nick. He couldn't act any more strangely. He gave Harvey a charming smile.

"Don't smirk at me," said Harvey. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing in this world," Nick returned. "Excuse me for just… just a minute, continue making me breakfast, definitely do that…"

He teleported back into the bedroom. This was too important to delay. Why hadn't he picked up the other pictures? Standing in front of the dresser again, he took a deep breath and did so now, then stared at the silver-framed picture in his hands. It wasn't a photograph, since witches didn't take those. It was art. A picture of the deconsecrated church and Sabrina in black silk, glittering jewels in her ebony veil, her hair like snow under a night sky. She was smiling the particular smile he loved, the one that was just for him, and she was on Nick's arm. He was wearing a suit and a short jaunty cape, and smiling back at her. Nick had never smiled like that in his life, but he felt tempted to start now.

He didn't want to put the picture down, but he did. He needed more answers. He ran down the stairs, and when he skidded and almost ran into the railing he wished he'd teleported. 

He burst in through the door, where the mortal was getting out a frying pan, and said, testing: "So your wife--"

"Our wife," Harvey said mildly, then looked suspicious. "Wait, why is she my wife? Are you guys fighting? I will not get involved in witch fights! I've made that so clear. I won't know about an obscure point in fourteenth century alchemy and I won't vote to break the tie, I won't do it."

Our wife. There. Nick sat down and stared at the granite island, where the mortal had thoughtfully left him another coffee. He'd done it. He'd offered Sabrina turtle-dove hearts, and she'd let him press the engraved box into her beautiful hands. She'd taken them. She'd wanted to. She'd looked happy, in the picture. Happy to be with him.

There was just one more thing.

“You and I… are not married,” said Nick slowly.

Surely not! What had happened in this future? 

“No,” said Harvey.

Nick nodded to himself, and took several calming breaths of morning air. Life made sense again. 

“But…” said the mortal. “If you wanted… we could be.”

Only sheer desperation caused Nick not to break his cup. He badly needed the coffee. Actually, what he needed were large amounts of demonic drugs.

“Is that why you’re acting so weird?” said the mortal. “Were you—nervous about bringing this up?”

Nick didn’t actually get awkward or worried like the mortal did, but he understood he had to seize any excuse for why he might be acting differently. He shrugged.

Harvey seemed to be processing. 

“I kind of figured… you knew I wasn’t going anywhere. With her, and all.”

Nick nodded. Sure, that made sense. If Sabrina was here, why would the mortal go anywhere else?

The mortal seemed to be struggling with a sentence, or a thought. With him, it could be either. “I know—that Sabrina’s the main—and you shouldn’t feel—”

Nick lost patience. “Are you trying to tell me something? I literally cannot understand you. Say it, if you can.”

The mortal drew in a gulp of air.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ll marry you.”

Nick sat stunned. Harvey gave Nick that little smile, shy and sweet.

“Thanks for asking.”

Did I, though, Nick mentally screamed at the mortal. Did I ask? He was pretty sure he hadn’t, but the mortal was being stupid as usual and had got confused—he was easy to confuse--and now Nick was engaged. In the future! When it wasn’t even noon yet! 

This was the kind of absurdity that happened around the mortal all the time.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two very big surprises hit before noon….

Nick went over the possibilities available to him in his mind. Each seemed more complicated than the last. 

“Did you want turtle-dove hearts,” offered Nick at last, cautiously. Keeping it traditional.

Harvey looked as though he might throw up. “No! I mean, thanks for the thought. But oh God, please no.”

Right. The mortal got squeamish. And then he swore.

“So…” Nick searched his mind for strange mortal customs. “So, rings?”

“That’d be nice,” said Harvey, sounding relieved.

It occurred to Nick that they were heading directly for disaster and something must be done to remedy the situation at once.

“I will pick the rings!” Nick snapped. “You have no taste.” 

Harvey rolled his eyes. “I’m an artist.”

“But you’re wearing that shirt voluntarily,” Nick pointed out. “Though I’m prepared to forgive all if, as your betrothed, I can have a celebratory shirt burning?”

“No,” said the mortal.

His favorite word. Except he’d said yes to Nick about one thing.

The mortal was wearing several rings already. One of them must be Sabrina’s ring, to show they were married. Nick had never seen the point of jewelry before. Mortal rings were immobile, and thus hardly a challenge to catch. But now maybe he understood. The rings stayed put. So Nick could look at the ring, when the mortal wore it, and think: that’s mine. To keep.

The mortal wanted to be.

“So, is we-just-got-engaged sex entirely out of the question…?” 

“Nicholas Scratch. Will you stop,” Harvey scolded. “She’ll be here any minute.”

This was great news. Nick was very much looking forward to seeing Sabrina, and then, finally, sex.

Except because Nick’s life never seemed to work out the way he wanted, there was no Sabrina and no sex. 

Instead a very tiny girl wearing red and gold robot pajamas ran into the kitchen, long black hair flying out behind her like a flag. She caroled out joyfully: “Daddy, Daddy! Good morning, Daddy!” and immediately dashed over to the mortal, who took her little hands in his and did a somersault with her, then set her carefully back on her feet.

“Good morning, sweetheart.”

Nick sat bolt upright. “Who is this child?” 

Harvey rolled his eyes. “Sit with this one a minute, Diana, and I’ll get your breakfast.”

The little girl reached up her hands, with an imperial air that reminded Nick of Sabrina though the coloring was entirely wrong, for Nick to help her onto one of the stools by the kitchen island. Nick complied, staring at her.

“Not enough cawfee?” the little girl asked, sympathetically. 

Nick shook his head. This was a perennial sad truth.

The salt and pepper canisters set on the kitchen island between them wobbled, then edged over her way. _Witch child_ , Nick thought, with the same feeling of kinship he’d had on first entering the Academy, finally getting to surround himself with people like him.

He concentrated and the canisters slid back over toward him. The little girl’s dark eyes crossed with intense concentration, the salt toppled over, and Diana giggled into her folded arms. Their gazes met, conspiratorial.

He didn’t entirely understand her presence, but she was very cute. 

Harvey put another cup of coffee by Nick’s elbow, running a hand absently over Nick’s hair as he did so. 

The mortal was going to be clingy, probably. Nick supposed everyone wasn’t as cool and chic and independent as Sabrina and himself. He could deal.

The mortal took his hand away almost at once, moving back to his frying pan. There was no need for him to rush off in that reckless manner. Nick almost fell off his stool trying to follow his hand. Mortals were annoying.

Instead of dwelling on this, he returned his attention to the vexing issue of Diana.

Daddy, the little girl had called the mortal. She was far too young for that to mean anything but the obvious.

“What…” Nick coughed. “What do you call me?”

Diana gave him a familiar scornful look, from those dark eyes. “Nick.”

The mortal was extremely white bread. So was Sabrina, though she made it work. So how did this child have hair as dark and skin as olive as Nick’s mother had once, long ago?

It was so strange, to have someone look like Nick who was alive, not dead in his memories or frozen in a family portrait. 

This child looked like him. The conclusion was inescapable.

But Nick and Sabrina were too young to have children! The mortal was still alive. Sabrina couldn’t be even fifty yet! What disaster could possibly have happened?

Harvey brought the little girl a glass of orange juice. As she drank the juice, Diana leaned back against his chest without even looking behind her, so sure was she that he would be there. The mortal hummed and stroked the child’s long dark hair.

Nick was thinking the matter through. 

If… Anyone would want their child to have this, if they could. Maybe Nick and Sabrina had done this on purpose, while the mortal was still alive.

But what was the mortal getting out of it?

Maybe Harvey and Sabrina couldn’t have a child? Sometimes that happened, even with magic. And Sabrina would want to pass on her infernal power, of course, so she might have asked Nick to help out. Then Nick had somehow, by means of unmatched cunning and sexual prowess, seized the opportunity and transformed this request into an invitation to stay. 

Yes, that was it. Everything made sense. Mystery solved, in under an hour, even when not adequately caffeinated. Satan, Nick was smart. 

Sabrina liked Nick, and thought he was sexy. She’d loved him once perhaps, a little, even if it was mostly out of gratitude. And now she loved Nick enough to marry him, after she had the mortal safely locked down. Nick could see how, if he got lucky, she might get attached again. Sabrina had a loving heart. 

They both did. And the mortal had been involved in the sex, and either because Harvey was sentimental or because Nick was great in bed or a combination of the two, he’d got attached as well. And the mortal didn’t tell lies, so whatever promises he made, he would keep. 

Nick had seen Sabrina and wanted her, figured the mortal was part of the package deal, and thought: oh, nice. Then for the few days when Nick believed things were going well with the mortal, at certain times, Nick thought of the mortal being part of the deal and thought: oh, _nice_. Looking forward to that.

After everything fell apart Nick tried very hard to pretend he’d never thought any such thing. 

But now he had the mortal for his own, and could think whatever he wanted. Look at that, it’s mine. Shoulders. Kind. Tall.

Nick studied his catch with satisfaction. Harvey clocked him looking and raised a quizzical eyebrow, as though he had some concerns about Nick.

Ha, Nick thought, gloating. Too bad for you, and much too late. We’re getting married! You just try taking it back.

Harvey dished up bacon and eggs and tiny sausages. He made a little vampire face on Diana’s plate, which Nick supposed was artistic of him. Nick didn’t get an artistic plate, which was lazy of the mortal, but Nick was almost immediately distracted by the sight of the mortal’s own plate. 

“Excuse me,” said Nick, thoroughly scandalized. “Excuse me, what do you think you’re doing?”

“Trying to have a nice family breakfast with my daughter and some weirdo,” said Harvey. “A mistake. I see that now.”

Nick reached over, confiscated the mortal’s plate and tipped all the bacon onto his own, then returned the plate with the scrambled eggs on it. 

“You can’t have any bacon,” said Nick. “It’s bad for mortals. Cholesterol. Heart. Things. I’ve read about the subject extensively.” 

“Not this again,” sighed the mortal, and had the barefaced audacity to attempt re-acquisition of the bacon. 

Nick hit him with a fork, but didn’t stab him, because it was important to be careful with the mortal. “Get away from it. Do not scythe years from your already pathetic lifespan.”

“Bad for mortals,” the little girl repeated in a sing-song voice, clearly delighted.

Harvey picked her up and flipped her upside down as she shrieked with what appeared to be great enjoyment. “What do we not do?”

“We don’t speak denigigratingly of mortals,” Diana said, tossing her long hair over one shoulder as Harvey placed her carefully back on her stool. “Nick thinks he is funny but he’s not.”

Nick made a face at her. Diana made a face back. Harvey took advantage of this opportunity to take bacon off Diana’s plate and eat it, right in front of Nick’s very eyes. When Nick glared, Harvey grinned at him.

“I cannot believe you would do something like take food from the plate of _our child_ ,” Nick said accusingly. 

He checked the mortal’s expression when he did that, to see if he was surprised by the phrase. The mortal only shrugged, as though it was true, and stole more bacon off Diana’s plate. Nick couldn’t let the poor girl go hungry because the mortal was determined to commit theft and suicide, so he divided his own bacon with her. He wasn’t pleased about it. He reflected, as he had many times, there must be mortals Sabrina could’ve picked out who were smarter than this one, but nooooo, it had to be this one, and Nick had to cope with the fallout. 

“Hey, my sweet lamb,” the mortal said, and Nick was briefly appalled before he realized Harvey was speaking to Diana. “Could you play for twenty minutes while I finish up this picture? I meant to be done before you were down, but Nick got up early and distracted me.” 

Diana reached out her hands for him, and he swung her up in his arms. “Picture,” said Diana, and the mortal carried her over to see it. “Sabrina!” said Diana, sounding pleased—she was clever, Nick thought—and thus Nick came over to see the picture too. Besides, he’d been deserted all by himself at the kitchen island.

The picture was of Sabrina, so it was very pretty, in twilight blue colors with her standing under a tree with branches bare and white as bone. Twigs crossed and twined above her brow to form a crown, and the moon was caught in a net of branches high over her head, a stream of radiant light pouring down upon her luminous hair.

“I love it,” said Diana earnestly.

Harvey kissed her cheek. “Thanks, baby.”

“I like it too,” said Nick.

The mortal gave him a sidelong glance, a little shy. “Thanks.”

But there was no kiss for Nick, why exactly? Mortals made no sense. 

The mortal got back to his art, dotting in the points of stars among the branches. Diana’s idea of playing seemed to be to seize hold of one of the sleeves dangling from the flannel shirt around the mortal’s waist, then dance around the sleeve, a tiny witch with a tiny maypole. 

Nick snapped his fingers and one of the kitchen chairs sailed across the tiles toward him. Then he sat down in the sunlight pouring through the bay window, possessed himself of the mortal's free sleeve and rested his arms against the back of the chair, and laid his head down in his arms. It had been a long and tiring day already, what with the time travel and getting engaged. In fact, it had been a long and tiring few months, what with being in hell and being in love and so many painful, difficult things. 

The mortal was singing a mortal song under his breath, soft and sweet. The child was singing a different song, largely featuring the word ‘Daddy,’ which Nick believed she had made up. 

This place was lovely, like Sabrina’s house. But Nick got to actually live here.

I will never go back, Nick thought. Never. 

He drifted off, warm in the sun and anchored, his head full of song. When he woke, the world was still warm and soft, the mortal kneeling by Nick's chair with a look in his eyes that made Nick glance over his shoulder: that look was always directed at Sabrina or the mortal friends. But not in this place, in this time. Now Nick could have everything he wanted. 

“Hey, I have to get going,” said the mortal.

“Going?” Nick repeated, uncomprehending. “Go where?”

Diana began to scream and cry and throw herself upon the mortal. Nick found this response intelligent and reasonable. 

Sabrina was the most special and beautiful person in three realms, so it made sense she would sometimes have business more vital than being with Nick. He could accept that. The mortal was a mortal, he couldn’t possibly be doing anything that important. Prudence said mortal boys were nothing but objects, toys. So Nick should get to keep the mortal if he liked. 

“Why are you going?” Nick asked. “It would be better if you did not do that.”

“I still am, though,” said Harvey. He tried to detach Diana's grip, failed because she was extremely tenacious, and then started to move with her sticking to him like a barnacle with long ebony hair. Nick tried to use the sleeve he was holding to make Harvey stop this madness.

Harvey kept acting casual and making his way toward the door with two witches hanging off him, so this abandonment must be a regular occurrence. Nick was so deeply shocked by and disappointed in him. 

"Come on, guys," said Harvey. "I have an exhibition, you know this."

“But your family!” Nick shouted.

Harvey blinked.

“Sabrina’s your family now,” Nick pursued.

“Yes?” said Harvey.

“And this child,” Nick continued. He grabbed Diana’s shoulder and shook her slightly for proof. Diana pulled on the flannel shirt and sniffed. Diana was a team player.

Harvey smiled reassuringly down at her. “Yes.”

“And—and me,” Nick said in a more subdued voice. The evidence really did seem to suggest it, but it was still possible he’d got this wrong.

“Yeah,” said Harvey, as though it was simple and easy as that.

“Then this is familial desertion!” Nick said triumphantly. “You can’t do it! You can’t go.”

“It’s not familial desertion. It’s for three days,” said Harvey.

“Three days!” Nick repeated, aghast. “That’s insane! That is insane! I thought it was going to be eight hours, tops.” 

He’d heard mortals typically went away from nine until five.

“With a suitcase?” 

“I don’t know!” said Nick. How was he supposed to know why mortals did the things they did? This was so unfair.

He didn't understand why the mortal wanted to go. Had Nick done something wrong? It was so great here. 

"Oh, hey," Harvey said, in a changed voice. "Are you having--the dreams again?"

Nick had dreams of hell always. But maybe not here. Maybe not now, in this house, with these people. It seemed possible, though in the past every night for Nick was a stain he couldn't wipe out. During the day he didn't even let himself think of those dreams. He let himself lean in a little closer to the mortal, taking what shelter he could.

Harvey got hold of Nick by the back of the neck—in a nice way, it was strange—and pulled Nick in against his own body. He cupped Nick’s neck with that easy gentleness of his, drew his other hand up along Nick’s back in a long soothing stroke which made the ever-tense muscles in Nick’s body turn to liquid. Could all mortals do that, or just this one?

"Okay, Nick," he said in his ear. "Okay, I get it. I won't go."

Nick made a low, slightly desperate sound and nuzzled his face in against the mortal’s throat. He was safe here, welcome here. He could stay.

_Oh, little mortal love._

He remembered a time late at night in the mortal’s bedroom when Nick dreamed of Satan and woke choking on ash and bitterness, feeling the Dark Lord’s hot breath on his neck and the weight of the Dark Lord’s hand on Nick burning like a brand that couldn’t be escaped. In those dreams and later, it seemed as though darkness was all Nick would ever know. But then there was the mortal, strange and lovely as daylight in hell. He touched Nick, and that felt clean. Wake up, he said. You don’t have to go. 

And there was refuge even in Nick’s mind, because for a moment Nick looked up and saw only the mortal’s deep concerned eyes, the tender line of his mouth. He couldn’t think of anything but—having that, something Nick didn’t know how to deserve, getting the mortal on his back on the floor or into the ocean-blue depths of his virginal bed. The mortal was showing so much skin, and among Nick’s people that would’ve been a clear message. That Nick could have what he wanted, that all he had to do was try and the mortal would fall backward easily. He might be happy, smile against Nick’s mouth, pull Nick down to him. Nick would do his best to make sure the mortal liked it. Nick wouldn’t hurt him. 

But the mortal was a beautiful artless boy, offering simple comfort. He would be shocked, maybe even distressed, if Nick tried anything. And Nick was terrified of being sent away.

Nick had been sent away, in the end. Even without trying. But now the mortal had changed his mind.

It would be so embarrassing and shameful, to put his arms around Harvey. So Nick kept his dignity and just kept hold of his T-shirt, the worn material knotted tight in his fists, while the mortal rubbed his back. It was a funny thing for him to do: the mortal didn’t have ointment and Nick hadn’t been flagellated lately in any case. But it was nice as well as odd, like many things about his mortal. He could keep doing it, if he insisted. He was so clingy, but mortal weirdness wasn't so bad.

Then Diana stopped crying, and said with dark treachery: "But you have to go, Daddy, you have an exhibition. In London! It's very important."

"It's not more important than Nick," said the mortal, which was… so nice. And stupid. Judging by Diana's tone, an exhibition was a much more important thing. 

Sabrina's family did nice things for her, like her Aunt Hilda made her waffles and her cousin Ambrose helped her cast dark illegal spells. Spoiling her, they called it: giving her treats, because they loved her. Nick had found, unexpectedly, that he wanted to do that for Sabrina too: finding her dead mice to use at murder trials and everything else she liked. A treat was giving something to someone else, no matter what it cost you, because you wanted them to have it. Wanted them to be pleased, more than you wanted anything else.

Coming from the past and immediately stopping someone from having important things was the opposite of giving them a treat. Nick shouldn't do it.

Every nerve ending in his body complaining, Nick leaned away and out of the mortal's embrace.

"I'm all right, I'm just being dramatic," said Nick, which the mortal seemed to accept--insulting, since Nick was cool at all times. "Go to your important thing, which I hear is important. Tell Diana to be good and tell me to take care of her and get lost."

The mortal didn't tell lies himself, and he wanted to trust people he cared about. He'd made a bad mistake and added Nick to the list of those people, so he accepted Nick's deception with wholehearted faith.

“Take care of Nick,” the mortal told Diana.

Nick made an indignant sound.

“Be good, if you can manage it,” Harvey told him, grinning, and tricked him with a kiss, then leaving immediately afterward. Who ever heard of saying goodbye with a kiss? This was outrageous mortal behavior. Nick had many complaints.

The door was shut by the time Nick had recovered from being tricked. The bright, lovely house was a little darker, suddenly.

Diana sat on the floor and cried her head off. Nick sympathized with her entirely and he was evolving a strategy to help her. Clearly, she hated Nick. However, Nick had been given telephone numbers by many mortal girls, and he knew what the numbers were for. You could call the girls up with a telephone and the numbers, much like calling up a demon but with added technology. Mortals could be acquired by using a telephone. A mortal lived in this house, so surely they had a telephone for his convenience. So the solution was simple: Find the telephone. Figure out how precisely a telephone worked. Get the mortal back.

As he was wondering what a telephone looked like, Diana cracked open one dark eye.

“Are you not going to give me things to stop crying?” she asked, in the tone of one disappointed she had to feed Nick his lines.

“Oh!” said Nick. “Yes! What do you want? Anything!”

“Eyeballs,” Diana replied promptly.

“Great call,” said Nick. 

“We have to go to see Aunt Z and Aunt Lily if we want eyeballs. Daddy and Sabrina say they’re ’scusting.”

Nick had so many questions. Among which: Who the heaven is Aunt Lily? What kind of well-regulated witch household didn’t keep eyeballs in stock? He didn’t blame Sabrina, the ideal woman. He was certain Sabrina would be reasonable about eyeballs if she wasn’t being persuaded to make poor choices.

“I think it’s very wrong of the mortal to let his family _starve_.”

Diana frowned. “Everything Daddy does is right.”

“Now, that’s just ridiculous,” said Nick. “Have you seen the way Daddy dresses?”

“I love Daddy the best of anybody!”

“Yes, yes,” said Nick. “I love him also, but you must admit he is a dumbass mortal who complicates everything most extremely.”

Diana seemed prepared to argue, and potentially headbutt Nick in the knees, when a thunderous knocking began. Nick brightened. The mortal had come back! It was amazing how the mortal made all good decisions these days. 

When Nick opened the door, he regarded the tentacled, oozing monstrosity on their doorstep with extreme displeasure.

“I seek the King of Hell!”

Nick slammed the door in the demon’s face.

“Who is the King of Hell?”

Diana was regarding him with an offensively smug expression, like she thought she was smarter than he was. Who’d taught the child that? 

“Sabrina can’t rule hell right now,” she pointed out with a world-weary air. “She has better things to do.”

“Okay,” said Nick. “But who is the King of Hell?”

“You are, Nick,” Diana told him.

Nick said faintly: “I was afraid of that.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Babysitting, Nick discovers, is hell.

Diana led him through the woods toward the Spellman house. She put on a red coat before she left the house, like Sabrina used to wear when Nick first knew her. A red coat, for a girl walking through the forest. But no dangers would touch Diana, Nick thought. She was safe.

She reached up and he reached uncertainly back for her hand, but she put her small fingers through one of his belt loops instead. Nick was privately relieved. He hadn’t held hands a lot, and he didn’t want to get it wrong.

“Do you think I’ll like school when I start?” she asked him, thoughtfully.

“Yes,” said Nick after some consideration. “I always liked school.” 

He felt sure Diana was smart like him, and hadn’t caught stupid off the mortal.

Diana nodded. “Sabrina says when she began school, that’s how she met Daddy. They were just the same age but Daddy was tall and Sabrina was small, and Sabrina went up to him and then they were together forever and ever and ever. That seems nice. School would be nice if Daddy was there, obviously.”

“Hmm,” said Nick, who’d personally found it very worrying when Harvey was at his school, what with the terror Harvey was about to be killed for being a witch-hunter or Sabrina might decide to kiss Harvey on the face some more and leave Nick alone forever. 

“And then when she started the next school, you were there,” said Diana, with approval. 

“Yeah,” Nick said softly. “I was there.”

At a lunchtable with Sabrina, side by side smiling at each other, that first day, and Nick had thought they would have a thousand more days like that. Then he’d known they wouldn’t.

And now, somehow, they had.

Diana nodded her sleek dark head. “That’s how school is. First day, you find a friend forever and ever. So I do think I’ll like it.”

That settled, she sang Nick a song as they walked past the yellow sign and up the curving road. Nick knocked on the door of the Spellman house, and then almost fell down the steps. He seized hold of the porch railing in one hand and shoved Diana behind him with the other. Lilith stared at him with cool disdain while wearing a green satin dressing gown.

“Lilith!”

“Nicholas?”

Behind Nick, Diana peeped: “Aunt Lily!”

This was… this was Aunt Lily? Nick remembered days of burning and freezing, a thousand kinds of pain, and one such kind had been her fingers, clawlike in his hair. He stared at Lilith in horror. Her face brought hell back, and oh, he would die rather than go back. He would gladly die.

Then Zelda Spellman appeared behind Lilith, dropping a kiss on Lilith’s green-silk-clad shoulder, and Nick’s whole brain slammed to a stop like a broomstick hitting a cliff.

“Nicholas, you fine specimen,” said Zelda. “Do you need to use the portal?”

“Yes…” said Nick, questing. 

Zelda nodded crisply. “Good, you should see to it. That prince of hell needs to be taken firmly in hand about the soul collection.”

She swept off, all hauteur and trim skirt with black lace hem trailing. Diana skipped after her, and Lilith glided away, and Nick had no choice but to follow. 

“Yes,” said Nick, with quiet horror. Which prince of hell? Pruflas? Beelzebub? Where was he supposed to go?

Oh, but he knew. He knew. This was the price he had to pay for this life. He had to go to the place he would have died rather than return to.

Apparently the Spellmans had built a portal to hell behind their mural of an apple tree. Zelda knocked on the wall, and an apple of truth fell neatly into her palm as hell gaped.

He couldn’t go, but if he even flinched, they would know something was wrong. Lilith could scent weakness. Nick drew Zelda closer to him. 

“Don’t let Lilith be alone with Diana,” he murmured in her ear. 

He didn’t care if it did make Zelda suspect him. He wasn’t going to risk the child.

Zelda gave him a sharp look, then nodded. He could trust Sabrina’s child with Sabrina’s aunt. He knew enough of love by now to know that.

Nick stumbled through the portal, and saw the golden curve of fingers that made up the throne, heard the hissing all around and felt the shadows close around him. Of course, of course he was back in hell, and hadn’t he known that he would have to come back, some day?

He’d known. He just hadn’t been able to bear the knowledge. Nick stood in the shadows of hell, and tried not to look at the place where he’d been chained, and tried not to shake and break apart.

“Sabrina’s warlock, come to play king,” murmured a deep strangely accented voice behind Nick, and every muscle in Nick’s back went taut.

Caliban. That was the prince Nick had to deal with. Oh no, oh heaven, not Caliban. Sabrina had trapped him. How had he got out?

If the sight of Lilith brought back the terrors of hell, the sight of the demon prince Caliban brought back the sick misery of the carnival: the sick misery of being who he was, and having that be so far from enough. 

Even thinking of that day at the carnival made Nick’s head spin like the lights in a wheel. He’d woken screaming that morning in Sabrina’s bed, wanted to cut away every defiled part of himself, and then agreed to go to the carnival in a daze not wanting to disappoint her. He’d thought, mistily, that he liked carnivals. He’d been to a summer fair once before. Seen Sabrina there, for the very first time, her starry eyes shining brighter than carnival lights. Talked to the mortal there, for the very first time, and the mortal had been sweet with him: he hadn’t hated Nick then. Nick wanted to go back to that carnival, in mellow late summer, with winter a bright prospect of love before him. 

Instead he was left at this new carnival, a wreck of who he used to be in the raw trembling beginnings of spring. Sabrina was febrile with power he didn’t understand and couldn’t help shrinking from, and he felt like he was losing her every minute even with her fingers tight on his arm. She’d changed out of her leather miniskirt, dressed more like a mortal, and so had he, and he’d known who they were both trying to look normal and mortal for. 

Thank any dark goddess within reach, Nick hadn’t seen the mortal often while he was still corrupted by Satan’s influence. He didn’t know what he would have done. The mortal had wandered over to them at the fair, innocent as a lamb, all tall with his terrible shirt, and asked Nick how it was going in an uncertain boyish voice, as if he was concerned. But he wasn’t, because he hated Nick and he was calling Nick _Scratch_ , the name putting Nick away at a distance where the mortal preferred Nick to be. Nick had thought _help me_ and _I hate you_ and _did you come for me_ and _she still loves you_ , and he’d wanted to go for the mortal’s throat. He’d barely been able to leash that impulse to violence. The mortal had seen it. He’d said Relax. Nick had been stricken by panic that anyone who looked at him could see how absolutely out of his own control he was.

He’d gone away to be alone with Sabrina, on their date, because she was Nick’s girlfriend and the mortal couldn’t have her back, not yet. He’d seen Sabrina cast one of those looks over her shoulder, at the mortal where he stood with his mortal girlfriend. She’d looked away quickly and Nick’s stomach had turned at the knowledge that hadn’t changed, even though he’d gone to hell for her. Nothing could change it. She still wanted the mortal, and he didn’t even blame her. He knew exactly how that felt.

Carnivals were for first sightings, apparently. In the disaster of that carnival, Nick remembered his first sight of Caliban very clearly. He and Sabrina were being attacked, and he’d yelled at Sabrina to run, thinking for a confused moment that even now if he could die for her, he’d die clean. She’d remember him as clean, as loving her, in the pure true way she wanted to be loved. Then there’d been Caliban, looking like a young infernal god and laughing at their pain, but also looking at Sabrina with an unmistakable flicker of interest. 

What Nick had over the mortal was power, and confidence—he could be more useful to Sabrina, offer her bigger and better things. But Caliban was the high nobility of hell. He could offer her more than Nick could dream. Sabrina had never seen Caliban groveling on the ground, Lilith’s jester, Satan’s chew toy, never seen Caliban weeping and shaking and begging. Sabrina could look at Caliban and see infinite promise, the way she used to see Nick. The mortal could love her and Caliban could elevate her, and what could Nick do?

After they saw Caliban, Sabrina told Nick she was queen of hell, the place Nick would rather die than go back to. He knew she was lost to him, and he kissed her and she was pleased because he called her Spellman the way he used to. He called her Spellman whenever he loved her best, and was lying to her the worst.

Then Nick went right to Dorian’s and asked for demon playthings. 'I want them. One of each,' he said. 'Because that’s what I like,' he told Sabrina in his head, defiantly. He knew it was supposed to be one true love, the prince from a fairytale, but Nick had seen the prince now and knew it wasn’t him anyway. Why bother trying so hard, when it was no use at all?

Why not choose oblivion instead, however dearly bought. A hard chest against his back, and a corset brimful of soft flesh pressed against his front, and his body caught in that place between agony and relief. Having the playmates knock him around, because if he was battered unconscious he could sleep.

He’d been contaminated by Satan. It hadn’t been entirely Nick. But it hadn’t been entirely not Nick, either. He was who he was. He wanted what he wanted. 

Looking at Caliban reminded Nick of how low he’d fallen, how vile he truly was. But he refused to let Caliban see that. 

“Hello, subject,” drawled Nick, and gave him a little wave. Caliban was wearing another fancy shirtless ensemble and posing under the stained-glass windows full of purple fire.

He’d never actually found Caliban personally hot. Sure, he’d probably bang him, but he didn’t particularly want to. He wasn’t sure why.

“How’s the mortal?” Caliban asked. “Dead yet?”

Probably because Caliban was the living worst. Nick abruptly changed Caliban’s status to ‘would never, no matter what.’

“No,” Nick said coldly. “He’s doing great. We’re getting married. You’re not invited to the wedding.”

Caliban actually appeared mildly hurt. 

Then he shrugged it off. “Ah well. Soon enough, he’ll be dead, and Sabrina shall need comforting.”

“I will be doing that,” Nick snarled.

“Will you, though?” Caliban asked. “You’ll be a mess. And we all know what you’re like then.” He actually winked. “If Sabrina prefers, you can be comforted too.”

“Ooooh, hard pass,” said Nick. 

“You and that mortal are both so unreasonable.”

Nick took a moment to be annoyed that Caliban was referring to the mortal by one of Nick’s names for him. Yes, the mortal was a mortal, but that didn’t mean Caliban got to call him one. Then Caliban’s meaning sank in.

“Have you been… hitting on Harvey?” Nick asked, with incredulous delight. “Ha! Hahaha. You absolute tragic lunatic. Could he even tell what you were doing?”

Caliban looked sulky. “Not at first.”

“And then?”

“He punched me in the face again,” Caliban admitted. “If he does that even one more time, there will be consequences.”

“No there will not,” said Nick. “He can do it forever. It’s hilarious that he does that. How many times has it been now?”

Caliban squinted. “You should know,” he said. “You were there for most of them.”

“I’ve lost count,” Nick claimed smoothly. 

He was so sorry to have missed Harvey punching Caliban in his smug face. It sounded like infinity times. He didn’t know why Harvey insisted on constantly doing extremely dangerous things, but at least this one was both funny and personally gratifying. Harvey had never punched Nick in the face even once.

It occurred to Nick that if Sabrina and Harvey had needed someone to father a child, they could have picked Caliban. He was the obvious choice. The child would’ve had greatly increased infernal powers. Sabrina thought Caliban was cute, Nick had observed that, so the process of having a child wouldn’t have been a hardship. 

Except the mortal didn’t like Caliban at all. The mortal didn’t like Nick much either, but clearly, there’d been a choice to be made. 

Nick smirked at Caliban, victorious. Ha, he thought. He chose _me_. 

It made no sense, since Caliban was a prince of hell, but the mortal did dumb stuff all the time. Now this was working in Nick’s favor at last.

“Doesn’t matter,” drawled Caliban. “Soon enough, you’ll be dead too. And Sabrina will be all alone waiting for me. Until then, if you keep being insolent you can collect your own souls.”

Nick didn’t like being spoken to in that tone.

The world went cold and clear around Nick as he thought through his situation logically. Sabrina, who always guarded what was hers, would not have let Nick come back down here without some protection. 

Nick reached for power and found it. Not his, but channeled to him, a white-hot burning resource. He knew how to use power.

“Caliban?” he said sweetly, and beckoned. 

Caliban nodded, and came closer. Nick let the Morningstar power lash out of him, a whip made of lightning to wrap around Caliban’s neck and bring him crashing to his knees. 

“I’m the King of Hell, and you were made from the dirt of my kingdom,” snarled Nick. “Test me, and I’ll send you back into the dust from where you came. Obey me in all things, and address me as Your Majesty. Or I’ll set my boot on your neck, and you can call me daddy.”

He dropped Caliban a contemptuous wink, and turned away from the prince and the throne. He wouldn’t sit in it, and he wouldn’t stay here, but he wasn’t the one down on the ground any longer.

He went through the portal, back to the Spellman house. Hilda Spellman was sitting at a table with Diana, playing pattycake.

“Hello, my darling,” Hilda said, smiling, and Nick glanced over his shoulder, but she was talking to him.

Hilda had never liked him, but she’d been nice to him when he came back from hell. Only then he’d hurt Sabrina and messed everything up, so he figured she hated him again.

In the future, it was all right. People could love him here, somehow.

Nick sat down in an armchair, the smell of sulfur in his nose. He closed his eyes and saw hell on the back of his eyelids. Sabrina had saved him in hell, again, but she was of hell. He didn’t know how to untangle her and hell. 

Don’t, he told himself. Don’t mess up again. You can’t. 

He clasped the back of his own neck, trying to ease the rigid tension in his muscles, pretending the touch was someone else and comfort was a possibility. _Relax_.

I want my mortal, Nick thought miserably. Where is he? When is he coming back? 

“Is Caliban dealt with?” said a harsh voice. 

“Yes,” Nick ground out, and opened his eyes.

Lilith was there, too close, her blue gaze pitiless.

“Good,” she told him. “Are you having the dreams again?”

“How is that any of your business, you evil hag?” Nick hissed.

Lilith smirked, red lips curling like a cat’s tail. “You’re not the only one who has dreams, Nicholas,” she said. “Don’t be a child.” 

The mention of a child made Nick look toward the table. 

“Come on, Diana,” he said. “We’re leaving.”

Diana went to get her red coat. As she did, Zelda hoved into view.

“Looking a little on edge, Nicholas.” 

“Am I?” said Nick.

“I think I know what the problem is,” said Zelda.

Uh-oh. “Do you?”

“Not being carnally satisfied at home, are we?” asked Zelda. 

“You know, now you mention it, no,” said Nick.

Zelda patted his shoulder. “I raised Sabrina and I am immorally certain she is a vixen in that area, but it can’t be denied she overworks, and where does that leave you? With Harvey. And well, we’ve all grown fond against our better judgement, but it can’t be easy to settle for vanilla when you’re used to infernal mint chocolate chip.”

“Wow, I wish I was getting sugar of any flavor,” said Nick. 

“If you’re really badly off,” said Zelda. “You could go and visit some playmates. Sabrina is older and wiser now, I’m sure she wouldn’t make a fuss, and we can watch Diana. You’re still very young and obviously extremely virile, and the child must be thought of first. How can you tend to her if driven almost demented by frustrated desires?”

Nick had to control a flinch at the mention of playmates.

“Excuse me!” said Diana in a thunderous voice from below. “Excuse me, Daddy says someone should cover my ears when conversations like this happen and nobody is covering my ears!”

“Right,” said Nick. “Thank you for the offer but it seems a poor idea, especially today. The mortal and I got engaged this morning.” 

“What’s engaged?” said Diana.

“It’s when you promise to throw your life away and get married,” Zelda explained. 

“Oh,” Diana sounded bored. “I thought you and Daddy and Sabrina did all that before I was born.”

“Are you entirely certain about this, Nicholas,” Zelda began.

Help came from an unlikely source, from the woman he’d thought hated him. “Leave him be, Zelds! What’s the inquisition about now?”

Hilda came over to Nick, and laid a hand against his brow. Nick turned his face in against her hand. She was a sweet woman, Hilda Spellman. Truly good, which was unusual for witches. It was probably why she and the mortal got on so well.

“Before you go, tell me: how are you?” she asked. Nick shrugged and smirked. “How’s my girl?”

“Beautiful!” said Nick, enthusiastically. 

“How’s my sweet Harvey?”

“Dumb as toast, as ever,” said Nick. “We’re getting married.”

Hilda beamed. “Congratulations, my love! Isn’t that nice.”

Nick thought so too. He left the Spellman house feeling a little better, taking Diana’s hand and swinging it as they walked home on the path through the forest.

“Is there going to be a wedding before my birthday?” asked Diana.

“I don’t know,” said Nick. “When’s your birthday?”

There was quiet for a minute under the trees, as Nick realized the enormity of his mistake.

“You’re not Nick,” said Diana, in an odd, uncertain voice.

She was too much Sabrina’s daughter to be afraid, Nick realized. But not quite old enough to be only furious at being crossed. He didn’t like to see her torn between hesitation and hurt.

Nick knelt down on the dirt road by her side. “Don’t,” he said. “I—I am Nick. Can’t you tell I’m Nick?”

He was afraid she wouldn’t be able to: that the Nick who could belong in this amazing future was so changed Nick could never measure up. Only she scanned his face with eyes dark as his but with the serious intentness of Sabrina’s, and her rosebud mouth relaxed. Somehow, he’d passed the test.

“Nick knows my birthday!” she said, now sounding simply angry, and a little confused.

“I’m Nick, but I…” said Nick. “I traveled through time.”

“Ohhhh,” said Diana. “Like Doctor Who?”

Nick frowned. “Who?”

“Exactly,” said Diana. “It’s one of mine and Daddy’s shows. Oh I understand! You must be here on an important mission.”

“Yes!” said Nick. “That’s right. Very important.”

“Where is Nick from this time, please?” asked Diana.

“I’m not sure,” said Nick. “Depending on how the loop worked, either he’s in my time, or no time at all will pass for him. It will be as if he blinked.”

A long blink, since Nick wasn’t going back. But Diana could help him, give him the information he needed to pass as her Nick, and eventually Nick would learn the part well enough so she’d believe in him too.

She didn’t look angry anymore, but bright in the way Sabrina did when she was interested in a topic Nick was interested in too. Nick smiled down at her, and she smiled up at him, wide and almost hopelessly innocent. Not like Sabrina’s smile, or Nick’s. That smile was the mortal all over. Nick smiled back.

“Are you from the future or the past,” said Diana. “If it’s the future, will there be flying cars?”

“You can fly yourself anytime, Diana,” Nick reminded her.

“Flying cars are more special,” argued Diana. “They’re science fiction. Daddy loves flying cars.”

“I’m from the past,” said Nick, who didn’t wish to talk about cars. 

He didn’t like them and he felt they were unsafe. That truck the mortal had was a constant anxiety, humming at the back of Nick’s mind like worry had an awful engine of its own: it could go wrong at any time with the mortal inside it. Now the mortal was being reasonable, surely Nick had been allowed to destroy it and the mortal would never do any more horrible driving again. Driving was simply too great a risk.

“Oh,” said Diana. “Before… before hell?” 

“What do you know about hell?” Nick asked in a distant, tight voice. 

“That… that you were very brave,” said Diana. “For Sabrina. Like a hero in a storybook. Because she’s your true love. That you got hurt a lot, and it means we should love you more.”

Brave. Like a hero in a storybook. Nick wiped his face with his sleeve. 

“Who told you that garbage?”

“Daddy did,” Diana whispered.

“Oh. That fool,” said Nick. “Checks out, I guess.”

That beautiful, beautiful fool. 

“Past Nick, you must stop being so rude about Daddy!” Diana said severely. 

Nick stared. “Am I not rude in the future?”

Who even was Nick, in the future?

Diana made a small thoughtful face. “Not this much,” she said. “It is constant now. But also there is more hugging now? I don’t really get it.” 

In the future, Nick didn’t insult Harvey? But he was also allowed to touch him, and future Nick—what, didn’t want to? None of this seemed very believable. Possibly the child was telling fibs to some end of her own.

“Did your father tell you about all the lying and the playmates when he was talking garbage about heroes?” Nick demanded.

“Am I supposed to cover my own ears?” Diana demanded back, clearly indignant at this treatment. “He said that sometimes people could be heroes but also enormous jerks! And then he said to forget he’d said that.”

Nick felt his mouth twitch in an involuntary smile. That really sounded like the mortal meant it. Wow, he was out of his mind.

“Then let’s forget it. Did you enjoy your eyeballs at Aunt Z’s? Are you full up?” asked Nick, and when Diana nodded, he said: “Then shall we head home?”

Through the forest and under a darkening sky, they went. 

“Will you help me with my secret mission?” Nick asked Diana when they got home.

Nick had forgotten his keys because he’d never seen them and didn’t know where they were, but fortunately he could do magic to open the door to home. 

“Yes, but what is it?” asked Diana.

“It’s a secret,” Nick reminded her. “For now all you need to do is fill me in on little details current Nick would know. When’s your bedtime?”

“I don’t see how my bedtime is relevant to the secret mission!” said Diana, but she admitted her bedtime. She added: “We read twenty books before bed.”

“Okay?” Seemed fairly reasonable.

“Sometimes…” said Diana. “Sometimes twenty-five?”

It was late by the time they were done reading twenty-five books. Diana asked to take a guitar to bed with her.

“Daddy plays me songs on this every night,” she said, tucking her small face against the guitar’s neck as if it was the mortal’s. “So I will sleep. I miss him all the time.”

“Yeah,” said Nick.

Of course, the mortal would sing his child to sleep every night. Nick had heard the mortal sing to a baby once, the softest tenderest little song, with Nick standing stricken on the porch. When Nick had moved in helplessly closer, the mortal stopped singing and glared. He wouldn’t sing for Nick, but naturally, he would for Diana. 

Nick still couldn’t believe they’d been familially deserted. Was there some mortal bureau they could complain to? Only Nick didn’t want a replacement mortal or anything. Just for the one he had to listen more, and never leave. 

“Do the wolf howl,” urged Diana, hugging the guitar. 

Nick hesitated. He didn’t want to think about his familiar, but clearly the child expected him to be someone who could do this. He tried to remember when he was young, when Amalia’s howl was the sound that made him feel safest in all the world. Like he was at home, before the ground at home fell away from under him. He made a sound that was a promise to the moon: this home would not fall away from this child. When he looked away from the moon in the window to her face, she was sleeping.

He wished she’d stayed awake, so they could read more books. Sometimes he wanted to be alone more than anything, no voices inside or outside his head. Sometimes the thought of being alone was unbearable.

He wandered to his room, and the enormous bed in which he was meant to sleep alone. He shed his clothes and crawled under the covers with a book, but for once books brought him no consolation. He kept thinking of the moment he’d stumbled through the portal, breathed that infernal air. Seen Caliban.

There was a flat black screen on the wall, the surface like still water at night. Diana had talked about hers and Harvey’s shows. Maybe he could watch a show and turn his brain off? Mortals did it all the time. 

Nick walked over to the screen and placed his hand on it. The surface rippled like water, too. Did televisions do that?

He saw a gallery full of pictures on high walls, passages lined with women and men in evening wear. The mortal was there, wearing a black suit with a waistcoat–really, he went away to dress well, how was that fair—and holding a half-full glass of wine. He was trying to smile, but the mortal was too honest and he didn’t like big groups of strangers and the smile was very strained around the edges. The suit was good, though. The mortal turned his head, as though hearing something, and Nick met his eyes. 

Nick jolted in surprise, and the screen flickered off.

“No,” Nick told the magic sternly. “No. Don’t do that. Bring him back.” 

Nick had to examine the hanging screen from all angles and murmur several incantations until he got the right combination and the screen flickered into life and color. The mortal didn’t come back, though. Instead, Nick saw Sabrina.

She appeared to be standing in an ancient temple addressing a coven comprised of ancient goddesses, some with sacrificial altars for chests, some dirt-stained with leaves in their hair, some remote and beautiful as stars. She was wearing her red woolen dress, palms flat on a stone table, and speaking in an authoritative fashion.

“Killing it as usual, Spellman,” he murmured, with love and faith. 

His lips were soiled enough. He wouldn’t let the name Morningstar sully them, and he would never let the name touch her. Not in his mind, not anywhere. Others could do what they chose. He could choose, too. 

Now, he could.

She was always Sabrina Spellman to him, pearl beyond price. She looked up from her notes now with a gleaming little smile, a red curve against white teeth he only ever saw when she looked at him. Sabrina leafed through her notes and scribbled a little heart in the corner, before turning a page with some finality. Even as her image flipped away with the page, Nick smiled back.

He was working out the spell now. It responded to him simply and easily. Of course, it would. Nick in the future must have made it.

He passed a hand over the veil of scrying waters, and got the mortal back.

The mortal was somewhere much weirder than an ancient temple. He was in a strangely impersonal bedroom, with his suitcase open on a neatly made up bed. Why would he go to a foreign place to sleep? He had a bedroom here. One with sexy people in it! Nothing the mortal did ever made any sense.

“Little mortal love,” Nick whispered, fond. “You are so stupid. What are you doing now?”

He was being cute, if nonsensical. He took a framed picture out from his suitcase and put it on the empty desk beside a little plastic card. The picture was of Sabrina, Diana and Nick, and Diana and Sabrina looked very cute in it. He should’ve taken a different drawing, Nick’s hair was a disaster in this one. The mortal would forget Nick was actually hot.  
The mortal looked... hot enough himself, right now, the top buttons of his shirt undone, hair pushed back from his sensitive face. The window of his—it must be some sort of inn—weird room was huge. A city by night was laid out before Nick’s mortal, a red tower and a glittering wheel by a long river. City lights and black night filled his dark sweet eyes as he walked toward the window, then laid his ringed hand flat against the glass.

Nick reached up to the scrying veil, not quite touching his hand. It would be nice, if the mortal knew Nick was there. Only he couldn’t, since he didn’t understand magic. Or much of anything, really.

The mortal tipped his head against the glass, and began to sing a little song, voice low and deep and indescribably soothing. The song began, _never thought I would be like this, wide awake waiting on a goodnight kiss…_ Nick closed his eyes, and listened, and remembered another night, hearing the mortal sing to a child. How impossibly sweet that had been.

He remembered being newly back on earth, wondering why he felt like he was still freezing and burning. He’d thought about crawling to the mortal’s porch, ready to make any bargain for peace. Then he’d told himself: no. Have some pride. And… Nick hadn’t wanted to hurt him. Better the playmates than that. 

Nick opened his eyes as the melody faded away, to the mortal’s soft mouth forming a gentle shape on the end of a song. The mortal’s profile, against clouds made luminous by the city, and peace at last. 

“Hey, my darling,” the mortal murmured. “Go to sleep.”

Oh. He _did_ know someone was there. But he thought it was Sabrina, clearly.

Just the same, Nick trailed back to bed. He thought he could sleep now, with that picture in his mind.

He fell asleep in a tumble of blankets and pillows, and woke to light. The moon shining on Sabrina’s hair, as she slipped into bed beside him.

“Did you miss me, when I was in hell?” Nick murmured, still half lost to slumber.

“Of course I did,” Sabrina whispered.

“And did you still love me, through—through everything?” Nick asked. 

“Of course I did,” Sabrina repeated.

His voice was very small as he asked: “Are you sure?”

“Always,” said Sabrina, and he knew that much was true. 

He let himself drift back into slumber, watched by her certain love. It felt for a moment as though he’d traveled backward in time rather than forward, to the night he woke in her bed with Satan wrenched out of him. She’d watched over him that night with love in her eyes he hadn’t seen before, and almost dreaming, he’d thought he’d proven himself, that he could be all right, that love had saved him and made him worthy. 

It wasn’t true, but it was the sweetest dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for the comments, guys! After watching Part 3… it was about what I'd thought would happen, but so sad, and I wasn't sure I could continue, but then I re-read the second Sabrina book and the kind words from you, and I did. Hope you enjoyed, and know you are appreciated.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rings, goddesses and timey-wimey complications!

Sabrina was gone when Nick woke, but as Nick stirred he saw her script on the inside of his arm. Her writing on his skin read _You looked so peaceful, I hated to wake you, and I had to be in early again. See you tonight! XOXO._

Off to deal with strange goddesses, and signing off with Xs and Os. That was Spellman, adorable and terrifying. And he’d see her tonight.

This room was beautiful, but the bed was too big and the whole room seemed too empty. And on the nightstand beside his book, a mystery was unfolding. He went to Diana’s room to make her deal with it.

“This small box is buzzing at me, Diana,” said Nick. “I think it has bees in it. And writing appeared on the screen that says ‘Some idiot.’ What are the bees trying to tell us?”

Diana lit up and held out her hands for the small box of bees. “Daddy!”

She was obsessed. Nick missed him too, but this wasn’t fixing his bee problem. While he stared at her accusingly, Diana climbed out of her little bed, stole the box of bees from him, pressed its surface and held it to her ear.

“It’s a phone,” she explained to Nick condescendingly, then lit up. “Hi Daddy, it’s Diana, how is London! I love you too! I miss you every minute. Nick had to do the howl so I would sleep.” 

She paused, clearly listening. Nick had a phone! He’d given the mortal his number and the mortal had called it, and now his horrible child had stolen the mortal. Nick made a meaningful gesture in order to have his phone back. Diana held up her small hand, then turned away with a swish of her dark hair.

“Yes, I suppose Nick is being mediumly good,” she said. “Could be better.”

Diana stayed on the phone for some time before she reluctantly surrendered it to Nick, at which point she shooed Nick out of her room so she could get dressed for the day. She seemed to have big plans. Nick went back to his room, held the phone to his ear the way she had and said cautiously: “Yes?”

Amazingly, the mortal’s voice in his ear murmured: “Hey, love.” 

“Oh, hello?” said Nick. “This is Nick, actually.”

“Really, what a total surprise, I’d better hang up, bye,” said Harvey. 

“No!” Nick exclaimed. “Don’t go away. Stay talking to me.”

“All right, you convinced me.”

That was easy. Harvey sounded as though he wanted to laugh, but he had a weird sense of humor and Nick was feeling somewhat distracted by his first ever phonecall. 

“I was just thinking about you,” said the mortal.

“Really?” said Nick. “You, thinking?”

Nick wandered by his mirror and then retreated because seeing the weird smile on his own face freaked him out. He leaned against the wall and stayed talking on his phone.

“I know you went to hell yesterday,” Harvey told him, quiet, and Nick felt the smile go away on its own. “How was that?”

“Fine,” Nick snapped. 

“How was Caliban?”

“Handled,” Nick snapped again. “If you think I can’t—”

“I think you can do anything,” said his mortal. “But I wondered if Caliban had been awful to you. Since he’s awful in general.”

Aw. Was the mortal worrying that Caliban had hurt Nick’s feelings? 

“Don’t ever like Caliban more than me,” Nick said, suddenly, without planning to say it. “Promise.”

“Will I promise not to ever like Caliban, a man I have punched in the face eighteen times, more than the man I’m going to marry?” 

“Are you trying to wriggle out of promising?”

“No.” Harvey did laugh this time. “I promise.”

Nick believed him. The mortal was very bad at lying, and his priorities were nonsense. Ever since Nick laid eyes on Caliban, he’d known he was doomed when it came to Sabrina: Caliban had all that power. She was the devil’s daughter, drawn to rule. It wasn’t just Sabrina. Any witch Nick had ever met would have chosen Caliban as a suitor. He was the only reasonable choice. But the mortal was never reasonable at all.

“Hey, uh, while I was on the phone to Miz Spellman, she said you told people we were engaged,” Harvey said.

Nick narrowed his eyes. “Yes. Everybody knows. You can’t get out of it, so don’t even try.”

“I wasn’t trying,” said Harvey. “I meant, I thought it would be nice to throw a party.” 

“If we had a party every time you made a lousy decision, life would be a continuous festival,” Nick observed.

“You know, you’re basically mean, Nicholas Scratch,” said Harvey, and Nick hummed agreement. “Hey, take a look at this.”

The phone made a beeping sound. When Nick held it away from his ear, he saw a little picture of the mortal, stooping in front of a glass jewelry case for some reason.

“This is great,” said Nick, impressed by mortal ingenuity. 

The mortal’s voice was happy. “Yeah? You think so?”

“Next can there be a picture with fewer clothes on?”

“I’m on a public street in London’s fancy shopping district!” exclaimed Harvey.

“Okay,” said Nick. “I’m at our house.”

He didn’t know why they were discussing their exact whereabouts, but he liked hearing the mortal’s voice, pitched soft for him. 

“Ugh, you.” The mortal sounded annoyed, which Nick had always found very funny. “Okay, I should go.”

“No, you should not, how many times do I have to tell you—”

“Yeah, bye, I love you,” said Harvey, and the sound of his voice cut off while Nick was still a little stunned. The mortal had learned all these terrible tricks to make sure he could effect his escapes, Nick was sure of it.

Nick carried the phone back to Diana, who was wearing a large purple ballgown and carrying a glittery wand.

“I can wear this, right?” asked Diana.

“Sure, I don’t see why not,” said Nick. “Show me how to use this.”

Diana sighed. “I worry about you, past Nick. This is the timer we set up because you should come check on me after eleven minutes.” 

She showed him the timer. 

“This is the contacts list.” 

It was just one contact that said ‘Some Idiot’ with a string of numbers attached. Nick wondered why these particular numbers had been assigned to his mortal. He couldn’t see the reasoning behind it, but he memorized them anyway. The mortal had given him the numbers because he liked Nick now, so Nick wanted to remember them.

“Oh, this is a picture of Daddy,” said Diana, thrilled. “And some rings! Shiny.”

“Oh, rings,” said Nick, enlightened and recalling bizarre mortal marriage customs. “That’s what he meant. Diana, I have the timer now, can I leave you alone for eleven minutes?”

“Yes,” said Diana. “I will draw a picture to illustrate my book that I am writing. So I can be a writer when I grow up, like Grandpa. Not the Satan one. The Edward one.”

Nick smiled at her. “Sabrina will like that.”

“You like that,” said Diana, sounding a little sad. “The real you.”

Nick knelt down. “I’m real. I do like it.”

Diana nodded, cheering up, then gave him a kiss on the cheek and wandered off to a table crowded with crayons. The mortal must have taught her all these strange, endearing little tricks.  
Nick looked at the picture of the mortal, the reflection in the glass case of traffic lights and a street sign. 

Then he teleported to the London street, looked up at the mortal’s back exiting a shop, and grabbed the back of the mortal’s jacket to tug him into an alleyway.

The mortal moved, one arm a bar against Nick’s throat, free hand going for a weapon. His arm against Nick’s throat was like steel infused with something else, not quite electric or magic. 

It wasn’t that Nick hadn’t noted the signs of celestial power the mortal was displaying. He just refused to engage with them. Heaven could have all the other mortals. This one belonged to him.

The mortal’s eyes fell on Nick’s face and his whole body changed. His touch went from attack to embrace.

“Oh God, sorry, sweetheart,” said Harvey. “Didn’t know it was you.”

Nick wished he could live always in that moment of recognition. When murderous ferocity turned to gentleness, meant just for him. Nick didn’t mind being hurt, often rather enjoyed it, but there was a unique savor to this. Having someone who could hurt Nick, someone made to hurt Nick’s kind, and knowing that Harvey never, ever would—because Nick was special to him now. Chosen, beloved. To be cherished and defended, and never permitted to come to harm again. No more being hurt, because this boy with deadly fire in his blood would hate it. 

“Little _witch-hunter_ love,” Nick whispered, delighted, pulling his head down and kissing him.

Harvey must have still been freaked out by the idea of hurting Nick. It was enough to make him dizzy, how fiercely and instantly the mortal responded. His arms went around Nick tight, then put him up against the brick wall with a glance behind his shoulder between kisses as if making sure Nick was protected from all angles. He kept shielding Nick from a danger that wasn’t there as his mouth and his body said _I love you_ and _I’ll keep you safe_ —and—and why not have ravenous sex up against this brick wall, what a great idea—

“So you like the rings?” Harvey murmured. 

“No, they’re hideous, don’t you dare buy them,” Nick murmured back.

The mortal made a complicated face, in which there was guilt but also the certainty he’d be forgiven. Nick made a face back.

“Oh no, you already bought them, didn’t you?”

The mortal drew out a black velvet box from his jacket. “I mean, I can take them back—”

Nick snatched the box and flipped it open. “Well, I hate them.”

He put his ring on.

“I could put it on for you—” began the mortal, as if Nick was an idiot and intended to risk the mortal changing his mind. He had the ring now. He wasn’t giving it back.

“Your taste is so awful,” he informed the mortal, angling for another kiss.

“You said you liked them!” the mortal protested.

Nick had done no such thing. Now he was forced to wear distasteful jewelry always. Prudence would scoff at him. He was about to complain further, when the timer on his phone made an unpleasant buzzing noise.

The mortal stepped back immediately, already lost. Nick followed him, body moving as if by instinct, for a last kiss. 

Against his mouth the mortal murmured: “Tell Diana and Sabrina I miss them, and tell yourself I miss you.”

What an embarrassingly sentimental thing to say, on a public street. Well, in a dark alley beside a public street.

Nick would never so degrade himself, so he just demanded: “Come home, come home, when will you come the heaven home,” then the timer buzzed again and Nick had to teleport away with one hand still curved around the back of his mortal’s neck, newly ringed fingers still tangled in his hair.

Diana looked up from her drawing, face serene, and showed him her book made out of folded pages. It was called Daddy and the Dragons’ Lair, and underneath the title was written her name. Diana Spellman.

Nick smiled as he read it. He liked that, the name reminding him of his favorite author and the only real family he’d ever seen, knowing his child belonged to that family. But it reminded him to ask something he’d been wondering. “Why do you, uh, call Sabrina by her name?” 

“Why not? I call you by your name. You’re just as important as Sabrina,” Diana told him earnestly.

“I think letting the mortal take the lead on educating you was a mistake,” said Nick. “You have all sorts of strange ideas.”

But he smiled down at her. She was cute, if deranged.

“I call Daddy my daddy because he is the most special to me,” said Diana. “So it’s fair. If Sabrina is your true love that means she’s the most special to you, right? And so you must be the most special to her. That’s fair, too. Everybody has someone who loves them the best. I worked it out.”

“What if you had a little brother or sister?” asked Nick.

“Hmm,” said Diana. “Perhaps it would be best if they were twins like Judas and Leticia, so they could love each other the most?” 

So Judas and Leticia were still around. Nick had thought they might be. They were Prudence’s little brother and sister, and his friend Prudence was remorseless and implacable when it came to what was hers. Nick had never been hers, but he’d been close enough to see.

After a time spent musing, Diana said: “When will they come?”

Nick blinked. “What?”

“My little twins,” said Diana. “I’ve been thinking about it and I would like them. Daddy will like them too. Daddy looooooooves babies. He shows me my baby photos alllll the time. He keeps them in albums. Can we get the twins today? That will be a nice surprise for Daddy when he comes home.”

“Uh… no,” said Nick. “It, er… takes a while to get them.”

And it wasn’t happening anytime soon, given Nick’s current celibate lifestyle.

“Okay,” said Diana. “Can we get them tomorrow?”

“Gosh, is it time for lunch already?” 

Diana asked for fish fingers, which were disgusting and weird. Her idea to make them in the toaster didn’t work. Nick eventually magicked up a different lunch, but Father Blackwood said food magic was women’s work and so nobody—not even the girls—was properly trained in it because women’s work should be easy. And it was actually very tricky.

“You tried your best, Past Nick,” said Diana gloomily, gnawing on a blackened crust. “For dinner let’s go to McDonald’s.”

“Who’s she?” asked Nick. 

Diana’s mouth went flat around her blackened crust. “When will your mission be complete? When does the other Nick come back?”

“Soon,” Nick said, vaguely.

He crushed down panic at the thought that he would never be able to fool her, that he would be discovered and sent away. That, just like in his own time, he would never be good enough. 

She explained McDonald’s and they got some, and he howled her to sleep without prompting, but he still felt uneasy. He wandered around the house, checking rooms, and settled in the room lined with books. Like a little personal library. It was very soothing there, some of the mortal’s drawings on the tables because the walls were crowded with books. He found a shelf with the books marked ‘Albums’ that Diana talked about, took the oldest-looking one out and opened the book on a mortal picture of Nick, Sabrina and Harvey. Sabrina was holding both of their hands, on a sunny day on some steps. Sabrina and Nick were wearing sunglasses and fancy jackets, laughing at something the mortal was saying. The mortal was wearing a sweatshirt and ripped jeans, and his hair was a darkgodawful mess.

Nick frowned. The mortal looked very young in this picture. Almost as young as Nick was used to. What was that about?

The door opening disturbed Nick’s reverie. Nick’s head jerked up at the sound. He saw Sabrina framed in the doorway, wearing a skirt suit embroidered with gold. 

“Hey, darling,” said Sabrina.

“Hey there, Spellman,” said Nick, instantly happy. 

She dropped her suitcase and came over to sit in his lap. He laid the album to one side as she looped her arm around his neck. Her hair, brilliant white as snow, was slipping out of a bun. Nick kissed her swanlike neck and studied her face.

“You look gorgeous but tired. What happened?”

“Nick!” Sabrina wrung her hands. “All the goddesses are being so difficult! They will not listen to me! And I know I’m right!”

“You always do. Okay, babe,” said Nick. “Let’s try to get perspective on this. Explain this whole situation to me from the beginning, as if I don't know what's going on.” 

Sabrina explained the situation, which was an insane one. Apparently she’d rounded up or called on every goddess she could think of in order to benevolently rule the cosmos. And she seemed surprised that this gathering of eerie immortals didn’t always get along.

“—And Persephone was like, don’t put on airs with me, we were all queen of hell once—”

“I believe,” said Nick, after some consideration, “this calls for a little charm and diplomacy. And you’re certainly charming, but I don’t know that diplomacy is your strength.”

Sabrina wrinkled her nose playfully. “Oh, you think you’re so smooth, Nicholas Scratch.”

He kissed her nose. “What do you think? And also, what would Persephone and Hecate think? Listen, the mortal suggested a party on the phone. Let’s invite the goddesses, and wine and dine and charm them, and see if they become more agreeable. Until then, tell me exactly what you want, and I’ll think of ways you can ask for it.”

“All right,” said Sabrina. 

Her eyes were glowing, and her smile, and he felt himself reflecting her glow back at her. The teachers at the Academy always called him bright, but he didn’t feel bright unless he was with  
her. It was always like that first day at the Academy, talking over classes with her at lunch, that spark traveling between them as Nick thought in wonder: this is a match.

Prudence was a clever girl, but being an intellectual match wasn’t just about cleverness but about sympathy. He hadn’t understood that, not until Sabrina.

They talked over how to rephrase Sabrina’s alarming demands into requests the goddesses might find acceptable, and relocated to their bedroom when they were both too tired to sit upright. Sadly, this also meant Nick was too tired to suggest a carnal end to the evening.

Mid-sentence, Nick fell asleep.

He woke with a jerk when a shadow fell across the bed. Sabrina was curled warm in his arms, and must be protected. She’d stayed awake longer than he had, long enough to get changed into a white silk negligee. She lay fast asleep now in a pool of moonlight. 

The shadow across the bed was—Nick understood why he hadn’t woken immediately when the door opened, why there had been no sense of threat. His mortal was there, with a sketchpad in his hands.

“What are you doing?” Nick mumbled.

“I’m drawing you two,” said Harvey. “You’re cute.”

“Obviously we are,” Nick snapped. “I mean, what are you doing all the way over there? Come here.”

His mortal, much more obedient in this time, came. He was still wearing a suit, though he’d discarded the jacket on the floor. He leaned down and kissed Nick, so Nick got hold of his shirt. 

Then he didn’t let go.

“Hey,” said Harvey. “Could you release me for like one second, so I can get changed—” 

Nick said: “No.”

If the mortal had been suggesting getting naked, Nick would’ve let him, but apparently he wanted to find a whole different set of clothes, which for mortals was an endless and laborious process. Nick didn’t know why the mortal insisted on being so clothed all the time and he wouldn’t tolerate it.

He kept his fingers knotted tight in the mortal’s shirt, so tight the buttons strained. Nick couldn’t move any further, because Sabrina was asleep in the curve of his other arm, but he could do this. He could hold on and refuse to let go.

“I didn’t technically need to be there for the weekend,” Harvey murmured. “And I wanted to be here for Saturday. Sunday I have to take another red-eye, but… I wanted to see you guys.”

“I didn’t ask why you came back,” said Nick. “It was senseless of you to leave. Don’t do it again.”

Harvey sighed, then surrendered as he should do far more often, curling on Nick’s other side and tucking his nose into the nape of Nick’s neck. Nick’s whole body went into almost shocked relief, changing like rain on parched ground.

 _Look, Ma,_ Nick thought. _I’ve got one of each. The best ones._

When it came to Sabrina, that was a simple and obvious fact. When it came to the mortal, it was a lunatic thought. Such thoughts only happened because Nick had been tricked into affection through foolish things that didn’t matter, like being fond of babies, and being a witch-hunter who tried to rescue witches, and touching people with that strange tender carefulness. 

But there it was. 

Nick slept, and woke only to beloved voices pitched low.

“—no, seriously. Seriously,” said the mortal. “I think Nick is having a nervous breakdown.”

Oh. Nick had been a little anxious about the mortal’s solemn voice, but they weren’t talking about anything important.

He sighed, trying to fall back asleep, and turned his face into the mortal’s throat for refuge. The mortal made a soothing sound and stroked his hair, which was wonderful.

Nick had been having a nervous breakdown for ages now. It was sweet the mortal had taken the time to notice: he was like that in a relationship, Nick had observed already. He was always noticing little details about people and trying to do things about the stuff he noticed. Nick was touched, but this wasn’t news. He was getting better. He felt better than he had in ages. As long as he didn’t have to go back, he’d be fine. 

“That’s part of why I got a red-eye and came back for Saturday. Does he not seem different to you?” asked the mortal.

“No, I don’t think so,” said Sabrina, the darkness preserve her sweet soul. 

She’d once seen Nick trying to cut off a limb and instantly suggested going on a carnival date. She always wanted to believe things were all right. Nick thought it was one of the few instincts for self-preservation in her own brain, since as soon as Sabrina absorbed that things weren’t actually all right, she would then rain down unholy fire until everything changed according to her will.

“Different how?” asked Sabrina, sounding troubled. “I haven’t been around much, but… We had a nice talk last night.”

“Has he been sleeping okay?” asked Harvey.

“Yes,” said Sabrina. 

Of course he’d slept well with her, knowing she would comfort him if he woke screaming. She’d done that once before, in the one night they ever spent together in Nick’s past life. She’d told him she didn’t care about the world, and he’d thought perhaps he could hide from it with her—but she did still care, and he had to face the world alone.

“He wasn’t, the night before last, before you got home,” said Harvey. “I think he’s been dreaming of hell. Sabrina, I know he said he could handle it, but I’ve never liked this hell business—”

Oh, weird. The mortal had known it was Nick, after all. When he sang, it was for Nick. Weird, but lovely. 

“Hell is only temporary,” said Sabrina. “He said he wanted to do it. He wanted to help me.” 

“Of course he did.”

“How has he been different? Has he been—pulling away?”

Harvey actually laughed. “Uh, no. He’s actually been… a lot more affectionate? But he’s calling me ‘mortal’ much more than normal.”

What did the mortal wish to be called? Nick thought. More endearments? Nick could do that. He wasn’t calling the mortal by his name, though. There were limits.

“And. He asked me to marry him.”

Nick hadn’t actually done that, and he felt strongly that it shouldn’t be used against him. He didn’t see what was so wrong about it, anyway.

Nor did Sabrina. She was a smart girl. “Well, he loves you.”

“I know, but—”

“Isn’t that—isn’t that great?” Sabrina asked. “Maybe he’s working through trauma! Maybe everything is amazing!”

That was the spirit!

The mortal continued being a buzzkill. “You have to admit, it isn’t usual behavior.”

“Well, you’re only supposed to ask once. Or twice,” said Sabrina, with the mischievous little laugh he loved. 

The mortal laughed back, soft, happy when she was happy, but then he said: “I’m worried. I wish you’d talk to him.”

“Can’t we talk to him about his nervous breakdown together?” Sabrina proposed.

“Sabrina, don’t make me say it,” said Harvey, almost desperately.

Sabrina sounded as lost as Nick felt. “Say what?” 

“He loves you more,” Harvey said, bleak. “You know how witches are with mortals. Nick’s better than most—the best of them all—but he’s still a witch. I’m a bonus. I think—I think a nice one. But you’re the essential one, the one who will last. You’re the one he takes seriously, so you have to be the one who talks to him about this.”

What the heaven was the matter with future Nick, that was what Nick wanted to know. Of course it was all true, but the mortal didn’t need to know. He was a good mortal. He really tried and he was so sweet, and he shouldn’t be made upset. Even Diana knew, future Nick made it so obvious. Future Nick was an asshole. They were well rid of him. 

Sabrina’s voice was subdued. “I’ll talk to him.”

So she knew, too. She hadn’t even tried to argue with the mortal.

The mortal sighed, as though relieved and ready to be asleep. “Thanks.”

“One more thing,” said Sabrina.

Nick felt her sit up, on one side of him. Without letting go of Nick, the mortal eased upward on the pillows. Above Nick’s head, there was the soft sound of a kiss. 

“You’re essential to me, Harvey Kinkle,” Sabrina whispered. “I’ll love you until I die.”

“Just until I die, ’Brina,” the mortal whispered back. “That’s enough for me.” 

Harvey truly was unintelligent sometimes. He’d known Sabrina almost her whole life, and he still didn’t know how stubborn she was?

There was something nagging at Nick about this conversation, but Sabrina had snuggled back down beside him, and the mortal’s hand was still in his hair. He could worry and work things out in the morning. 

He could sleep now.

He woke to light. Sabrina was hovering over him, morning sunshine turning the gleam of her hair into coruscating lights as though her snow-white locks were threaded with diamonds. He wondered if he’d ever get used to waking up with Sabrina. So far, it was astonishing every time. He smiled at the sight of her, and she bent down and kissed him.

“You seem all right to me,” Sabrina murmured, as though consoling herself.

“Just all right?” Nick teased.

“Maybe even better than that,” Sabrina teased back. 

She dipped down again, sparkling like diamonds, and the kiss went deeper, sweet and bright, her small body fitting exactly up against his. His hand slid up her bare thigh, and she murmured encouragement.

“Hold that thought, Spellman,” Nick implored, then twisted around in bed to kiss the mortal awake. 

Soft pillows, soft light, and the mortal’s mouth soft beneath his. He felt the mortal come awake, mouth curving into a slow smile against Nick’s, fingers laced with Sabrina’s curling tighter against Nick’s hip. Then the mortal sat up, rumpling back his messy hair with a strong hand.

“Morning, guys,” said the mortal. “It’s nice to be home.” 

Sabrina beamed at the mortal adoringly. “It’s nice to have you home.”

Nick pulled his shirt over his head and threw it across the room. 

“If someone doesn’t fuck me immediately,” said Nick, “I’m burning the house down. That’d be a shame. It’s a nice house.”

The mortal and Sabrina exchanged a look. Harvey arched an eyebrow and Sabrina smiled. Hope went electric in Nick’s veins as Nick realized they were really going to do it.

 _Oh, thank you, dark powers below and above,_ Nick thought. _Thank you._

“Do I hear Daddy!” Diana’s voice piped from behind the door. “I do! I hear him! I’m coming inside!”

There was a moment in which Nick contemplated infanticide, before he remembered to be reasonable.

“Let’s put her to sleep for a hundred years!” Nick suggested reasonably. “It’s a simple spell and we can take time off for good behavior, which she isn’t currently exhibiting.”

“No!” said the mortal, sounding shocked by very normal child discipline. “I’ll go to her. You guys enjoy yourselves.” 

“No!” Nick exclaimed, shocked and horrified in his turn.

The mortal, already up off the bed and giving Sabrina a kiss goodbye, grinned as if this was funny and leaned past Sabrina to press a kiss against Nick’s mouth.

“Tonight,” he murmured against Nick’s lips, rich with promise.

Then he dodged to evade Nick’s grasp. Nick fell back on the pillows, outraged, then pulled Sabrina back with him. Sabrina fell too, laughing and sighing as they kissed, but there was the sense—Nick was very familiar with this sense, when it came to Sabrina—that she was holding back.

“Nick, it’s Saturday,” said Sabrina, as if that was a well-known no-sex day. “I haven’t seen Diana for the better part of a week. I should… we should… let’s wait. For tonight.”

For the mortal. 

Nick paused, mouth caught between violent protest and a smile.

“I’ll tell Harvey to make breakfast for all of us,” Sabrina told him, taking advantage of his indecision, and gave him a quick kiss. “Put on a shirt.”

“Sometimes I feel your demands of me are strange and unreasonable,” said Nick.

She laughed, paused at the door as she tied the tie on her gauzy white robe, and mouthed: Tonight.

Nick decided to go with smiling.

Sabrina and the mortal, tonight. At last.

Being put on pause for ten hours was annoying, but it didn’t explain why Nick felt so weird. He kept replaying the conversation Sabrina and Harvey’d had in his mind. Perhaps it was that the mortal had seemed unhappy. Or that he’d mentioned hell?

Caliban, Nick thought. That was why Nick felt so uneasy. This was a weakness Caliban could exploit. Given the slightest chance, Caliban would work out this was the way to Sabrina and he’d lie to the mortal and trick him and betray them and the mortal would be hurt and the world would end.

So it was best, for everybody, that Nick lie first.

He’d tell the mortal he was all in love with him, say whatever mortal nonsense Harvey wanted to hear. His mortal would be pleased. Caliban would be foiled. 

Good, Nick thought. Solved.

He went downstairs. He knew where the kitchen was by now, but in any case he would’ve followed the scent of coffee and the sound of laughter. The mortal was cooking an enormous breakfast. Sabrina was sitting on the kitchen counter, singing a song for Diana as Diana pirouetted across the floor. Morning light shone through the curtains and Sabrina’s diaphonous wrap. The mortal was looking over his shoulder at Diana and Sabrina, smiling his little smile. Sabrina’s hair was a brilliant halo and there were gold lights in the mortal’s eyes.

This was a beautiful house. Like Sabrina’s home, filled with love and laughter and dancing and family. And like the mortal’s house, which should have been bleak and wretched but still shone somehow, because he lived there.

Even when hospitality was on offer at the Spellmans’ Nick couldn’t accept it, couldn’t shake the knowledge Hilda Spellman didn’t really want him there, or the cold fear Sabrina would ask him to do something he couldn’t possibly do. That he’d let her down. He couldn’t be strong like she wanted, when every bit of him felt as if he’d been torn to pieces. He couldn’t have something as bright and lovely and impossible to carry as love, couldn’t bear it or deserve it. Only now the mortal was here, to share their problems and take care of them, the way he liked to do with people he loved.

He could have it now, Nick thought as he took his own plate of bacon and pancakes, then almost dropped the plate and smashed it to pieces.

Oh no, Nick realized. The problem’s not solved. The problem’s something else.

 _Until I die,_ the mortal had said. That was what had been bothering Nick.

This isn’t going to work without him, Nick thought in horror.

“Hang back a minute, mortal,” said Nick after breakfast, when Diana led Sabrina away by the hand, talking about ball gowns.

Harvey nodded, looking worried. Nick wondered why he was doing that until he recalled the mortal was fretting about Nick having a nervous breakdown.

Right, Nick commanded himself. Be romantic, solve all your problems. Go.

While he did so, the mortal took hold of his arm and manuevered him until Nick followed, doing what the mortal wanted and sliding onto the kitchen counter so the mortal could look up at him, uplifted face attentive.

The mortal was always doing trying to put people he loved above him. He had to put Sabrina up several steps, but for Nick the kitchen counter would work.

Nick gave him a kiss.

“Hey… darling,” said Nick, and found the word surprisingly easy to say. Harvey smiled hearing it, and suddenly it wasn’t so difficult to contemplate talking like that. He was a darling: it all made sense. “Little love. Will you do something for me?”

The mortal stopped smiling—no, why—and scowled at him. “No sexual favors until tonight!”

The implied promise made up for the tragedy of his mortal’s suspicious nature.

“Can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to tonight,” said Nick. “But nothing like that. This is just a little, tiny, nonsexual favor. Will you do it, babe? For me?”

“Well,” said Harvey. “Maybe. Is this about din—”

“I want lasagna, but no. Will you just please sell your soul so you can be immortal,” Nick proposed. “It’s only reasonable. I know you don’t like the idea, but things are different now. There’s Diana to think about. There isn’t any question of—Him. Sabrina can fix it up. Or—or I can. I’m King of Hell. I can do it. I’ll go back there, if I have to. It won’t mean you have to do anything you don’t want to do. Only don’t die. Please. Please. Okay?”

He tried to keep his voice coaxing and caressing, all the things his soft-hearted mortal would find persuasive. It was fine for him to be stubborn mostly, the mortal could have his own way, Nick didn’t mind, Nick didn’t want to make him do things he didn’t like. 

He punctuated every ‘please’ with a kiss, to further underline his insistence. _This time, don’t argue. This is really important. This is your life._

“Nick,” said Harvey, clearly about to argue.

“Listen. You’re already getting older,” said Nick, and Harvey tried to take a step back but fortunately Nick had a firm grip on his shirt. “No—it’s, it’s all right, I don’t mind but I can’t help noticing—”

“Can’t you? Let go—”

“No! Look, don’t get offended, I’d still sleep with you--”

“Gosh,” said Harvey. “Thanks. No need to strain yourself.”

“I just don’t want you to die,” Nick shouted at this stupid mortal. “And you will. Don’t you get it? You will.”

It was almost a struggle, so it was a shock when Harvey abruptly stopped trying to get away and leaned in. Nick almost fell against him. The mortal put his arms around Nick. 

“Yeah,” Harvey murmured into Nick’s hair. “I will.”

“You’ll die,” whispered Nick. “Caliban said I’d be a mess, and he’d comfort Sabrina--”

“Wow, I’m starting to think Caliban enjoys being punched in the face,” said Harvey. “Okay. This is Caliban’s fault. I see. That’s why I’m being treated to another round of a debate we settled years ago. Fine.”

“He wants my life,” said Nick, under threat from every side, from Caliban and mortality and the lurking fear he’d be found out. “He wants Sabrina. And he probably wants you a little bit, since he puts up with all the face-punching.”

Maybe Caliban was into it? Or maybe Caliban just knew that if he laid a finger on the mortal, he could wave goodbye to any hope of Sabrina ever. 

“Ew,” said Harvey. “Could’ve gone my whole life without that mental image, but here we are.”

“What’s the problem? Caliban’s hot,” Nick pointed out.

The face the mortal made was hilarious.

“He looks like Thor,” Nick pointed out. “You think Thor is hot.”

“I don’t think Thor is hot,” said the mortal, another ridiculous thing to say. “And anyway Caliban is nothing like Thor. Caliban is evil.”

“Evil people can be hot,” said Nick, making an illustrative gesture toward himself.

“No,” said the mortal, who liked to deny obvious truths. “Thor is a hero. He’s nothing like Caliban. He protects people and learns to understand mortals, and he certainly doesn’t trap people in stone like a total dick. You’re more like Thor than Caliban, I think.”

Nick frowned in puzzlement at the mortal, but he didn’t ask questions. There were too many questions. Nick didn’t know where to start.

“Do you think Caliban is hot?” 

The mortal was continuing to be appalled. Nick didn’t even know why the mortal was asking. Nick had said Caliban was hot already.

“Lots of people are hot. I’d rather sleep with you,” Nick reassured him.

“Nicholas, this is the worst conversation I’ve ever had since the last truly disturbing and upsetting conversation we’ve had,” said Harvey. “I think, uh, you and Sabrina need to have a long talk.”

Nick shook his head, almost involuntarily. He didn’t want Sabrina to talk to him about a nervous breakdown. 

“But not today,” said Harvey, relenting. “It’s Saturday. Miz Spellman made the eyeball lasagna. I’m buying a cheeseburger before we get there.” He smiled, as though he was going to tell Nick something very nice, then said hideous words. “Roz said she might be able to make it this time.” 

“I don’t want you to see that girl,” Nick said flatly. 

Did nobody but Nick ever keep his eye on the prize around here? Nick had nothing against Roz personally. He liked Sabrina’s best friend, but it was obvious madness to risk Harvey being alone with her. Look what had happened last time! Nick had idly suggested Harvey might like to bang this pretty girl who clearly wanted to sleep with him. It was meant to be a treat to cheer him. Then—without Roz even sleeping with him! Which was callously risking his life, thanks for nothing, Roz!--suddenly Harvey kept saying he was in love with Roz, and Sabrina constantly seemed as though she wanted to throw up but was trying to smile through it. The whole business had been traumatizing.

Roz might sidle up to the mortal at any point and mention horrible things the mortal found sexy and irresistible, like ‘monogamy.’ Roz must be monitored closely.

Harvey regarded Nick with a totally puzzled air, then clearly decided Nick must be making a joke, because who wouldn’t want to see Roz? The mortal was fixated.

“And Ambrose and Prudence,” the mortal added, enticingly.

“Prudence,” Nick said, chilled. “I must fix my hair.”

The mortal made a faint protesting noise, but Nick waved him off and slid off the kitchen counter, making his way upstairs and kissing Sabrina as she made her way down. 

“You lot go on without me, take Diana, I’ll teleport to the Spellmans.”

Sabrina called after him: “Nick, why does Diana think she gets to wear a ballgown every day now?”

“Can’t talk, getting ready!” Nick shouted over his shoulder.

Prudence would never let him hear the end of it, if she saw him like this. But the idea of seeing her was nice. Nick was also not opposed to seeing Ambrose. Nick was generally pleased to see hot people, unless they were Roz or Caliban.

But this wasn’t a party. It was a—family gathering, possibly? With Sabrina’s mortal friends also? Sabrina and Harvey had both said ‘Saturday’ as if it had special weight and meaning, not just a day but an occasion. Nick couldn’t entirely work it out, but he would. 

Once he’d used magic to get himself into some sort of order fit for Prudence to behold, Nick descended the stairs to grab his jacket. He hummed as he took the steps two at a time.  
Every moment brought him closer to tonight. Before that, he was ready to see what all the fuss about Saturday might be. 

Then the mortal materialized in the hall. Sabrina must have sent him back.

“Oh, hey,” said Nick, pleased to see him. “Did Sabrina send you back to get me? Let’s go.”

Or had the mortal come back because he missed Nick? That would be cute.

The mortal’s demeanor was not that of a man who’d been missing his beloved.

“Nicholas Scratch,” Harvey said, his voice extremely quiet, “why did Zelda just take me aside and talk to me about how I wasn’t keeping my man satisfied, and how I should abandom sentimentality, embrace practicality, and consider scheduling quality time for you and playmates?”

Oh, that.

Now Nick thought over that conversation, perhaps he should’ve put a few things differently. The mortal did not seem pleased.

“There’s no need for playmates,” Nick reassured him immediately. “I told her so at the time.”

“When you were talking to her about how unsatisfactory your sex life is.”

“Well…” Nick said. “Yes… but mortals being bad in bed doesn’t matter to me--”

“What!”

Whoops, looked like future Nick lied about that. Nick considered the mortal’s stormy expression. On reflection, great call, future Nick. 

“I mean, it wouldn’t! If it was true, which it’s not,” Nick lied. “But it wouldn’t matter if it was. And it doesn’t matter that it hardly ever happens. It’s happening tonight, so—”

“Oh no, it isn’t,” said Harvey. “I may never have sex again.”

“That’s very bad news,” said Nick. 

He hoped Sabrina was still on for tonight, but it seemed tactless to ask. Nick was generally good at tact, though he'd stopped trying with the mortal because only ridiculous things actually pleased the mortal.

“Still not a dealbreaker, though,” he added, to be consoling. “Is that mostly because you’re mad at me, or is this an age thing…”

Harvey looked furious. Right, mortals didn’t like being reminded of the fact their days were one headlong tumble toward death. Nick didn’t enjoy thinking about it himself. You’d think the mortals would be used to it by now, though. 

Then Harvey bit his lip. 

“It wasn’t—this arrangement wasn’t my idea, if you’ll recall. It was your idea.”

Nick just raised an eyebrow. He didn’t need to be told that. He’d had enough of Prudence, making fun of him for going soft on a half mortal… and maybe even a mortal, too. That had been humiliating enough without Harvey taunting him too.

Only the mortal wasn’t sneering. He looked very tired.

“I can see you’re going through something. You can… go explore other options, if that’s what you need to do,” said Harvey. “Playmates. Witch stuff.”

Wow, these were unexpected words. Was this because Harvey believed Nick was having a nervous breakdown, and wanted to comfort him? Probably it was like when Hilda made special food to cheer up Sabrina? Would it be tactless to say no?

But this was the mortal being careful again. Nick didn’t understand it, but something about it drew him in, always. The mortal’s head was bowed, so he maybe didn’t see as Nick came closer.

“All right, fine, I’ll do that, whatever,” said Nick, and leaned up, questing.

It had only been days, not long enough to get used to. It shouldn’t have been a shock, not to have Harvey meet him halfway with a smile.

Harvey turned his face away. He wasn’t smiling.

“Come on, Nick.” He sounded tired. “That’s done.” 

“What,” said Nick. “What’s done?”

“You and me. We discussed how this would go. We agreed to try it. We both knew it might not work. And… okay, it hasn’t. I understand your needs aren’t being met. But I said from the start that I wasn’t built the way witches seem to be. You have to understand I can’t do this.”

Unexpectedly Nick was furious and indignant, the way he used to be when the mortal was impossible. He’d seen the pictures, they were from years ago. Diana was five years old. This had been going on for years, so how dare he act like it was something they’d tried out for a week? How dare he act like this was no big deal. Nick had a ring. What was wrong with him!

“Is this about sex demons,” said Nick. “I won’t go anywhere near them, then. I thought you were just randomly offering me them! I can take or leave them.” 

“They’re not potato chips!” 

“I figured you were being thoughtful for a change,” Nick grumbled.

Instead, apparently, Harvey was trying to break up. Nick had been here a bare few days and the mortal was already attempting to bolt. Harvey had stayed with Sabrina practically their whole lives, and shown no sign of going away. Until suddenly Nick was there too, and the mortal decided oh no, I couldn’t possibly, witches are so terrible except for all the witches I personally love, don’t even look at me, make me forget I ever spent a moment with you, the experience was too horrible to be borne! 

_It’s you. He just hates you._

Harvey was by now actively gnawing on his lip. “If you’re not trying to renegotiate the terms of our agreement… What do you want?”

“I want you,” said Nick. “I want you to still…”

In the terrible silence, he fiddled with his hideous ring.

“I do still,” said Harvey, quiet. 

“All right,” said Nick, edging closer toward him again. “Don’t… don’t talk that way anymore. You’re not leaving Sabrina or Diana.”

“No, obviously I’m not,” said Harvey. “I’m married to Sabrina. Diana’s my daughter. I wasn’t talking about leaving home. I just think… I’m going to move my stuff out of our room.” 

I’m just leaving you.

“The bed will be too big,” Nick said, which was a stupid thing to say. Nick was smarter than this. He was just paralyzed by the swiftness of how much had gone wrong. 

Harvey’s mouth twisted. “Well, there’ll be room for the sex demons, then!” 

“Oh go ahead,” Nick said. “Go on and leave like you always do. Sorry witches are so unbearable. We’ll do fine without you.”

Harvey slammed the door. After a moment Nick heard the sound of a truck engine, and went cold. 

The mortal was mad at him, so probably Hilda was mad at him too. Possibly Sabrina was mad at him. Maybe he wasn’t invited to Saturday anymore, and he still didn’t entirely understand what the significance of Saturday might be. 

As Nick sat on the stairs with his head in his hands, he heard the sound of a key in the lock of the front door. Nick froze in the shadow of the wall, and watched someone come in: walking with confidence that wasn’t entirely Nick’s swagger, wearing a shirt Nick wouldn’t wear and with his hair too curly in a way Nick hated. But still Nick, for all that. Nick from another life. Nick from this life, come to take his life back.

Oh, this was all Nick needed.

“Spellman?” the other Nick called out. “Harry? Are you there? We’ve got trouble!”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In these strange times, what's to be done but write about warlocks having strange time travel! Thanks so much to my lovely and inspiring commenters.

Nick froze like a mouse under the shadow of an owl. He was hidden on the stairs, unless the other Nick tried to go up the stairs or looked his way.

Nick stayed hidden, and took note. Diana called him Past Nick, so this was Future Nick. It was vital to obtain as much information on Future Nick as he could, so he might make a plan.

“Hello?” Future Nick called. “Don’t mean to alarm, but there’s a bit of an infernal problem?”

Nick watched his future self prowl around the house. Future Nick opened the door to the kitchen, chin lifted to scent the air in a way Nick didn’t allow himself to behave when there were other people around. 

“Spellman?” the other Nick repeated, softer and with less expectation of a reply. “Harry?” After a moment: “Diana?”

There was something a little different about the other Nick’s voice, but he wasn’t sure what. Maybe it was slightly steadier.

Future Nick shut the door to the kitchen, then turned around. Nick thought for a moment that he was heading for the stairs and tensed, but instead Future Nick stopped by one of the mortal’s paintings of Sabrina, and leaned his head against the frame with a small, weary sigh.

Nick knew what the sigh meant, as well as weariness. The sound was relief. Homecoming.

Nick found himself unexpectedly furious. 

Why should this guy have this, somewhere to go back to, when Nick had nothing?

Nick remembered a dream he’d had once, during the time Satan lived within him. It had been so hard to tell reality from dreams, back then. He was no longer in hell, he was in the dungeon of his school with a salt circle traced on the dank earth around him. But he knew this was a dream because Sabrina was in the circle with him, and the mortals were at the door. She was on her knees, kissing him on the forehead as she’d done at Lupercalia, and that was what made Nick absolutely certain it was a dream. Because he’d thought of Sabrina doing that so much, imagined her doing that again every day in hell. The first time anyone ever kissed him, and was kind. 

Theo and Roz were averting their eyes, looking anywhere else but at this strange spectacle, but the mortal was looking right at them. He didn’t flinch, not the boy who found out nightmares were real and an instant later picked up a gun to do battle. There was sorrow and sympathy in his steady gaze.

And Nick knew Sabrina would leave. 

She would go away back to the mortals, to the life she’d treasured as much as magic and her family. Sabrina was always hurtling toward the next mission, bright as a determined falling star. Nick was just one more mission, and next she’d be onto another. But she always did go back to the mortal, for safe ground to stand on in times of trouble. She always, always did. She had when she was being tormented by the Weird Sisters, when they were expelled, and Nick would bet anything he’d ever dreamed of owning that she’d made sure the mortal was right beside her every day Nick was in hell. Nick didn’t want Sabrina to stop her bright progress through the world, changing it with everything she did. He just wanted not to lose her, and he knew he would.

If the mortal would just step inside the salt circle, she would stay. She’d be balanced, held in a crucial way. 

_You_ , Nick thought. _Come here._

But he didn’t, of course.

So, of course, Sabrina went away. Nick was left shivering alone on the cold ground, with only his lord, colder and darker than any underground prison, for company.

Nick sat in the shadow of the wall, looked at the other Nicholas, and twisted his hands together.

“Is it Saturday here,” Future Nick, who clearly understood the significance of Saturdays, murmured. 

Then he frowned and crossed the far side of the room, to the door the mortal had disappeared behind that wasn’t the front door. The door from which the sound of the truck had come.  
Future Nick’s back was to Nick now, but Nick knew the sound of his own voice, and could tell his eyebrows had pulled sharply together.

“All right, what the heaven’s gone wrong?” Future Nick said to himself.

Since future Nick was across the room, Nick risked whispering a spell, and completed the shaping of magic between his palms.

He’d tried speaking as low as he could, but it hadn’t been low enough. When he glanced up, Future Nick was standing so close that his shadow was already touching Nick. He must have moved soft and swift as an animal. His gaze on Nick was cool. He didn’t look pleased.

“You,” said Future Nick. 

“And you,” said Nick. “Or rather, me. Hi. Your hair is a mess.”

Future Nick arched an eyebrow. “Oh, am I being insulted by the extra from some prep school version of _Grease_?” 

Nick scowled. “What are you talking about? Has time travel unsettled your mind? You’re raving.”

“I wondered whether you’d been transported here or if you were just in stasis,” Future Nick mused. “Naturally, given my life, it had to be the complicated answer. Not only do I have to fight demons in the past, then go to hell to check up on the plotting there, but I have unwelcome surprise bundles of not-so-much joy on the stairs at home? Fantastic.”

Future Nick was being very ungrateful about his life, Nick couldn’t help but notice. He didn’t deserve it.

“Yes, I’ve been here,” said Nick. “Keeping your third of the bed warm. No need to thank me.”

For a moment, he thought Future Nick would hit him. 

Instead Future Nick said, with deceptive calm: “And while you were here, what have you done to my marriage?” 

“I haven’t done anything to Sabrina!” Nick snarled, insulted. 

“Why is the truck missing from the garage,” future Nick said, his voice becoming dangerous. “He doesn’t drive that unless he’s upset with me. What did you do?”

“Oh, are you talking about that mortal?” asked Nick, feigning surprise. “But you’re not married to him. Are you?”

Nick dropped his tone of fake innocence as he snarled the last demand. Two wolves, snarling at each other over territory. But then Future Nick took a step back.

“He doesn’t… want to be,” the other Nick said. Nick noticed his slight difficulty getting the words out. “But--he’s still my mortal, so—”

“I’m wearing a ring that says different. And you’re not.”

Nick waved the hand with the ring on it, so Future Nick could see. He did so in a breezy way. 

The other Nick’s eyes narrowed, chips of black ice. Nick saw the moment his focus shifted to acquiring that ring.

“That ring is hideous,” the other Nick snapped, glaring at the ring as though it personally offended him.

“Do you think so?” Nick asked idly. “Harvey and I picked it out together. I guess we’re just on the same wavelength. Unlike you. He likes it that I’m more affectionate now.”

The mortal hadn’t actually said so, but Nick had heard the soft note in his voice when he said Nick was being more affectionate. The mortal got the same way, soft and surprised, when his friends touched him or said nice things to him in Nick’s time. He did like it. Nick was sure of that much. 

Future Nick looked ready to kill.

“How… _affectionate_ have you been with my mortal and my wife?” 

His eyes kept sliding to the ring.

This was excellent. Before, the other Nick had two options, and one was totally blowing Nick’s cover by telling Sabrina and Harvey. Now future Nick wouldn’t be telling anybody anything, because he’d want them to think it’d been him the whole time, getting the mortal to agree, getting the ring. Now they both had only one option.

Future Nick ground his teeth for an instant, then drew in a deep breath. “Never mind. Doesn’t matter. Glad you had a good time here, _kid_ , but vacation’s over.”

“No,” said Nick.

“What do you mean, no?”

Nick lifted his chin so he could spit the words into the other Nick’s face. “I’m not going. Screw that. Screw you. I know you remember what I have to go back to. Most of my school is dead! The halls are so empty they echo. Prudence cries in the night, I can hear her, it’s the only sound there is, and there’s nothing for me besides my empty school. I can’t bear the way Sabrina looks at me… or how the mortal, he never looks at me at all… and every night when I close my eyes—no. No, I won’t go back. You can’t make me. I’ll kill you if you try.”

Suddenly, Nick couldn’t read the other Nick’s expression at all. It was so bizarre to see him, some parts the same as Nick was now, familiar as his own soul—and other sides a stranger. 

Future Nick leaned down so their faces were on a level, hand outstretched with his palm up, as if trying to approach a wild animal or show he wasn’t going to do magic. Nick kept his own fingers locked. 

He knew better than to trust himself. 

“I’ll tell you how I did it,” Future Nick coaxed, encouraging. “It can be better, when you go back.”

There was no need to explain what he meant by ‘how I did it.’ Nick understood. He meant, how he’d got all this. A home.

“Well… how did you do it?”

He wasn’t going back, but he had to admit he was interested in the answer.

“Was it to do with having Diana?” Nick prompted, airing his pet theory.

Future Nick looked genuinely startled. “What—no. Diana came years later.”

“Oh, so Sabrina and Harvey—that’s what I call him, it’s what he prefers, not that you care--can have their own? Huh,” said Nick. “But were they thinking maybe it would be gross to have a mortal child?”

“It would not be!” Future Nick snapped. 

“So your plan is to possibly get a mortal child and watch it die,” said Nick. “Did I suffer brain damage at some point, I wonder? Is this what I have to look forward to?”

As planned, Future Nick looked enraged. But Nick was actually curious, so he leaned forward and asked: “So how does it work, exactly? When they’re off being romantic with each other, do I get to sleep with other people then?”

“No,” said Future Nick.

Wow, Future Nick hated sex just like everyone else in the future. Nick was badly disappointed in himself. 

Future Nick was giving Nick another strange look, measuring. “Who would you even sleep with?”

“Anybody,” said Nick. “People, you know, they’re always trying.”

“Who would you actually choose?”

Prudence possibly, Nick thought, but then maybe Sabrina wouldn’t like that. She’d specified not the Weird Sisters, once.

“Dorian?” Nick hazarded.

Future Nick’s lips twisted. “You don’t even like sleeping with Dorian.” 

Nick stared in offended amazement. “Uh, yes I do? I should know! Apparently, I’ve done it a heaven of a lot more recently than you have.”

If Nick caught Dorian in the right mood between debauchery and ennui, and gave him a blow job, Dorian could be persuaded to discuss art and literature and the theatre. It was nice. Dorian spoke of those things with lost but dimly-remembered love, and Nick didn’t have anybody else to talk to. 

Nick’s expressions looked much more smug from the outside than Nick had ever realized. 

“It’s not important,” Nick conceded, so he could stop thinking about that, and turned to what he was truly curious about. “How did you convince them, then?”

“It was the mortal’s idea,” Future Nick reported.

Nick laughed in his face. “You liar. I know I’m constantly lying, but I can’t believe I got bad at it. It was not Harvey’s idea! He would be scandalized!”

Future Nick scowled. “Listen, could you stop calling him that?”

“I shall call my betrothed anything I choose,” Nick mocked.

Future Nick gave the wall a look as if it was another person and Future Nick wanted to catch their eye and demand, _Can you believe this guy_?

“It was his idea,” Future Nick said, after another deep breath. “In a way. He and Sabrina got back together after he and Roz imploded—”

Nick sighed. “What a tremendous surprise on both counts, I don’t think.”

“—and there was that hideous mess with the time travel—”

“Wait, this hideous mess?” 

“—no, a different hideous mess,” said Future Nick. “Time travel is trouble. The mortal says that’s always true in the comics.”

Nick was saddened but again not surprised to discover his life had more chaos in store. The only thing he was surprised about was that his future involved going deranged and paying attention to Harvey’s crazed mortal ramblings.

“Never mind about that,” said Future Nick. “Don’t get me started about Caliban. Or the tank.”

“Tank of what?” Nick asked. 

Future Nick waved off the question. “Things went absolutely to heaven, and I mean that literally. And there was—we thought the mortal might be dead, and we thought we might be about to die—and Sabrina and I kissed, and—”

“Can you never manage to seal the deal?” Nick asked. “And what do you mean, you thought the mortal might be—it’s your job to look after him! Sabrina trusted you with that job! Why can you never get anything right?”

“It’s a very long and complicated story!” said Future Nick. “I’m trying not to tell you too much and create another hideous time paradox! It wasn’t my fault he ran off to do something insane, you know he’s always doing that—and so is she--”

“She isn’t!” Nick snapped. “Sabrina is practically perfect.”

Future Nick laughed. Nick stared at him with even more offended amazement.

“—oh, in the future we disrespect the world’s greatest woman?”

“No, we don’t,” said Future Nick. “I love my badass imperfect wife.”

And apparently we just tossed the word love around casually, as though it was easy to say. Nick felt very alone in his own company.

“Listen,” Future Nick continued. “Sabrina told Harry about the kiss, and by then he’d spent more time with witches—you know how cozy he always is with Hilda and how he tries to be all chummy with Prudence—and he could see Sabrina was very upset. He doesn’t like her to be sad.”

Nick knew that. It was one of the few things Nick and the mortal had in common.

“So he said Sabrina could have both of us,” said Future Nick. “If that was what she wanted.”

All right, Nick was still astonished even that hadn’t been too scandalous for the mortal to contemplate, but perhaps that made a little sense.

“Then what happened?”

Future Nick winced. Nick regarded him warily.

“—I somewhat misunderstood his offer…” muttered Future Nick.

“You made a pass,” Nick said flatly.

Future Nick grimaced.

“Why do you embarrass us like this!” Nick demanded. 

“In my defence,” said Future Nick. “Sabrina was not clear when she outlined the terms of the agreement. She still had a lot of those mortal hang-ups, and I was busy trying to instantly agree, and you know, why look a gift horse in the mouth… it seemed like a good idea at the time…”

“And what, you expect me to believe he _accepted_ the pass?” Nick asked with scorn.

“Oh no,” said Future Nick. “That did not happen. He was very surprised. There was a scene. It was awful. And then he tried to support my sexuality, which was also awful.”

“Your what?” said Nick. 

“Please don’t make me re-live this,” said Future Nick. “Something something. Theo. Robin. Carl. LGBT… maybe Q? alliance at Baxter High.”

“You’re just saying random letters…” 

Nick, quietly appalled, was beginning to think he really might have suffered brain damage in the future. Sometimes dark magic could affect the mind like that. Like Agatha.

“The point is,” said Future Nick encouragingly, “we agreed to try to—be friends, and date Sabrina, and then… well, more horrors occurred to be honest with you, it’s endless, and Sabrina was in hospital—”

“In hospital?” Nick asked, shocked. “Surely her aunts would never allow something so dangerous and unsanitary!”

“—She needed blood, look, I’m trying to be reassuring here—”

“You’re very bad at it!”

“Here’s the reassuring part,” said Future Nick. “It worked out. She wanted you enough. He gave way. I’m not saying this will be easy, but I am saying you’re not always going to feel the way you do now. There will be enough time to heal. There’ll be time for a lot of things. You do have something to go back to. You will. Everything is going to work out, I promise you.”

Nick didn’t have time to listen to meaningless platitudes.

“Wait, go back,” Nick snapped, impatient. “You’ve skipped over the important bit where you convinced them.”

“—well,” said Future Nick. “We’re devastatingly attractive, so I’m sure that helped. And it’s important to be careful and not presume too much--”

Nick stared at him with gathering horror.

“Oh no,” Nick interrupted. “You don’t know, do you? It all worked out somehow and you have absolutely no idea how, which means you’re no help. Don’t talk to me about being hot. I was hot the whole time, thanks. It cut absolutely no ice with the mortal and it wasn’t much good with Sabrina.”

What good was making someone want to sleep with you, if they still wouldn’t even if they wanted to… because they loved someone else, and that was more important? 

Sabrina wanting to sleep with Nick had seemed more helpful than it actually was. It meant she told herself she had an attachment to him that went beyond the physical, because she didn’t want to be the sort of person who only wanted someone physically. She wanted to believe it so badly, and he wanted to believe even more.

But that didn’t make it true.

Only somehow, this Nick had made it true. And he didn’t even know how he’d done it. He was as clueless and desperate as Nick himself. 

“Pass,” said Nick. “Pass on the humiliation, pass on the chaos. I’m tired and I don’t want to, and I’m you. I know you well enough to see that you’re lying again.”

Future Nick had the gall to look insulted.

“I’m not lying,” Future Nick lied. “Do you think even looking at you is easy for me? You remind me of a time I want to forget, but I don’t want to be cruel to you. I know you’ve had enough of that, so I’m trying to tell you all I can, I’m spending time with you rather than going to my family or fixing the mess in hell--”

Of course. Nobody wanted him, not enough. Nick didn’t even want himself. _I’d give it all up for you, Nick,_ Sabrina had told him once, but he’d seen the glint in her eyes and he knew she was lying. Just like she’d lied to him when she’d promised she’d wait before turning herself mortal. She’d be sure she knew better than him, and she’d do what she wanted. 

Sabrina wanted that power more than him. And this other Nick wanted his life back. And people lied, to get what they wanted.

Nick sneered. “Oh, sure you’re not lying. Like you didn’t lie to Sabrina, you just conveniently left out the truth you were spying on her for the Dark Lord? Tell me this. If it’s so easy, why can’t you do it again? Just stay in the past and make it all work out the same. ” 

“Because I have a daughter, you arrogant idiot—”

“—And we know about time paradoxes, and parallel timelines,” said Nick. “From reading actual books, not comic books. Traveling through time carries risks, but you did it. And why? Because you know, one wrong move in the past and you don’t have any of what you have. You think a few soft words will make me trot back like a puppy hoping for some future pat? I’m done suffering in anyone’s place. You couldn’t bear to live what you’re trying to send me back to!”

Future Nick was silent, so Nick knew he was right.

Nick visualized again his future self, leaning against that picture, forehead down on the frame as though it was a shoulder.

Way back when, before he officially met Sabrina, he’d still been sleeping with Agatha and Dorcas off and on. Not Prudence, which was a shame. She’d been annoyed with him for breaking up with them. She hadn’t relented until she scooped Nick up to impress Ambrose Spellman with an exclusive and attractive orgy.

That was how it worked, between Nick and the Weird Sisters. He wanted Prudence to like him, Dorcas wanted Nick to like her, and Agatha wanted to both take and leave Nick. Sometimes Agatha wasn’t in the mood to deal with Nick and it was best to steer clear. Sometimes she got bored or angry and wanted to bang it out.

She found him when she and her sisters tried to haze new girl Sabrina, and came off the worst. Nick felt already impressed with the new girl, but he didn’t share that.

“The ghosts say she called her mortal boyfriend all upset,” Agatha sneered, fingering the nail marks she’d made on Nick’s chest. “Why would she even do that, what use is he? We thought she’d fold then, but no such luck. She is so annoying! How did she get the better of us?”

Edward Spellman’s daughter, Nick had thought at the time. Of course she can do whatever she puts her mind to.

Later, they found out the mortal boyfriend’s family were witch-hunters. Agatha and Dorcas both came to Nick’s bed then. Nick thought Dorcas was actually a little scared, but Agatha was furious. Nick endeavored to give satisfaction, but it was difficult to balance Dorcas’s wish for slow and reassuring with Agatha’s wish for the lash. Nick’s shoulders and jaw hurt for a week.

“That’s why Sabrina called him back then,” Agatha declared, mystery solved. “Her pet witch-hunter. He helped her, he’s dangerous, I know it.”

Agatha killed Harvey’s brother, and tried to kill Harvey. Nick decided to protest their behavior by declining to sleep with Agatha again. He didn’t blame Dorcas as much. She was a nice girl, even if she couldn’t pronounce Latin and conversations one-on-one with her bored him, she wouldn’t have come up with the killing on her own. That time, with the whip and her furious discussion of witch-hunters, was the last time with Agatha.

And she’d been wrong.

Nick worked out why Sabrina had called Harvey on his own. 

It was during the three days before New Year’s that Nick figured it out, in the time when the mortal seemed to like Nick a little bit, before the mortal decided Nick wasn’t worth bothering with anymore. They’d been sitting on the steps of the mortal’s house when the mortal asked in a low, tentative voice—in the careful way of speaking he had sometimes, as though the mortal thought voices could hurt, and he didn’t want to—if Nick had anybody to talk to. About his feelings. 

What on earth. Nick could picture the scorn on Prudence’s face if Nick tried. Let alone Dorian’s. Nick had been surprised Dorian still let him stick around after Nick refused to keep sleeping with him, since Sabrina made it clear banging anyone else would upset her.

Of course, Dorian had probably figured it was only a matter of time until Nick and Sabrina fell apart. Everyone else had seen it was hopeless from the beginning, Nick supposed. He was sleeping with Dorian again now, when he couldn’t stand the idea of going back to school.

Nick wrenched his mind off the thought of lying awake in Dorian’s cold bed, thinking of all the bottles in the bar promising oblivion only a wall away.

He threw his thoughts back to a brighter time, sunlight on snow, that winter day at the mortal’s house. How Nick could tell the mortal was offering—to be there for him, in some undefinable way. To listen, and not be scornful. Making a promise that he’d want to listen.

Everybody lied. The mortal hadn’t kept his promise, but Nick believed him at the time.

Nick found himself glaring at Agatha over the dinner table that night. The mortal hadn’t done any witch-hunter things. Sabrina had called the mortal for emotional support, like in the mortal books. Even as he glared, Nick knew it wasn’t really fair to blame her. Agatha had made a fatal mistake, but how could any witch have guessed what was going on? 

The mortal always did weird stuff--brought his friends little snacks when they were sick, stroked Sabrina’s familiar and talked to it in a baby voice even though he was mortal and couldn’t actually communicate with familiars.

The mortal thought his behavior was normal.

Nick knew better.

There was only a little love in the world. It was hard to get, and even harder to keep. Nick shouldn’t blame Future Nick, any more than he should’ve blamed Agatha. 

Nick faked a smile. “Like I said, pass. I like it here. I’m doing better at being you than you are. Everybody’s happier without you.” 

Future Nick, obviously rapidly losing patience, demanded: “If you’re doing such a great job being me, why is the truck missing?”

Nick waved his hand again, airily. “Him taking the truck was just a small misunderstanding about sex demons which I will soon clear up—”

He didn’t especially wish to sleep with sex demons, but it was nothing Nick hadn’t done before. He didn’t see why the other Nick suddenly had an ashen cast beneath his olive skin, why he looked as though he might retch.

“Sex demons?” the future Nick snarled. “I am _married_! You mindless, selfish child, do you have the faintest idea what you—did you-- You’re disgusting! Can you not control yourself for one minute?” 

The look on this other Nick’s face made Nick think about the look he saw lurking behind his own eyes every time he glanced in the mirror. Sometimes he thought that if he was fast enough, if he whipped around wolf-quick when he was turning away, he’d catch the lurking contempt out of the corner of his eye. Except now contempt was written plainly across his own face. 

He wanted to smash the mirror. He never wanted to see this, ever again.

“It’s not me who only says I love you when he’s _drunk_!” Nick shouted back. “It’s not me who has him thinking he’s a bonus who won’t last so—so it won’t matter if he leaves—”

The ashen color lurking beneath Future Nick’s skin turned to white. “Did you tell him that!”

“He already knew!”

The other Nick’s mouth had gone ugly and distorted. Nick knew the shape of that snarl, had felt it when he shouted _I hate you, Sabrina_. That was how he’d spoken to the girl he loved best, and now he could see what that looked like. Black hair turned into a wild tangle of thorns, eyes glinting with unearthly light, and teeth gleaming beneath the mean curl of that awful mouth. More wolfish than the wolves, more satanic than Satan.

People thought this guy was hot? Why? How? He didn’t want this anywhere near Sabrina or his mortal. No wonder the mortal was always leaving.

It was Nick’s fault.

“You ruin everything,” Nick whispered. “I hate you.”

“I hate _you_ ,” said Future Nick. “I was—I was happy. I should have known you’d wreck it. You always do.”

Nick waved one hand in the beginnings of a spell, so Future Nick looked at that. Simple misdirection, a conjurer’s trick, and with his other hand Nick sucker punched Future Nick right in his sneering, snarling face. When the other Nick staggered back Nick leaped up, seized the mortal’s painting off the wall and hit Future Nick with it. The picture frame caught him hard on the cheekbone, so it split, blood rushing down the other Nick’s face like tears. Glass sprayed everywhere and Future Nick hissed a spell so glass shards flew at him like deadly rain, but Nick shut his eyes, whispered the counter spell and then they were hitting each other in a glass whirlwind.

Blindly, Nick hit him, and hit him, and hit him. It was like when he was in the dungeon with Father Blackwood possessing Satan, raining down blows, except this felt better. He didn’t hate Sabrina, or Father Blackwood, or even Satan. This was who he hated: this was who he wanted to hurt.

Even the blows the other Nick landed made Nick grin, the blood in his mouth tasting almost sweet. The other Nick was finally fighting back, fighting for his life, but Nick could tell his future self didn’t want to hurt him. Not like Nick did. Once again, his future self seemed like a stranger. Nick couldn’t imagine feeling that way.

When Nick opened his eyes, there was blood in his eyelashes. There was blood on the floor, and blood smeared all over Future Nick’s face as Nick forced him to his knees.

“Wait,” Future Nick said in a clogged voice. “You don’t understand—you don’t--”

The other Nick had spent too long in a home, with people who didn’t want to hurt him. He wasn’t used to being always on guard, like he should have been. Nick whispered the spell in his ear that he’d proposed using on Diana this morning, the spell to make someone sleep for a hundred years. As soon as he felt the other Nick sag against him, Nick pushed his limp body into the trap Nick had prepared for him while sitting on the stairs. A Devil’s Snare, a pocket dimension partway to hell where the other Nick would be trapped. Until he woke up, and enchanted his way out. 

The other Nick would sleep until then. He could rest. Nick wanted to hurt him, but he didn’t actually want him to suffer.

In a hundred years, the mortal would be dead. Sabrina would be lost. And Nick found he didn’t really care what happened to him after that. In a hundred years, the other Nick could take his revenge, and welcome.

Nick stayed there, amid the wreckage and broken glass, on his knees for a moment. Then he lifted his bleeding hands for a last spell, and teleported to the Spellman house.

There was a cozy little family tableau laid out before him. The fireplace, the assortment of comfortable armchairs and sofas, the damask wallpaper. Lilith was perched on the arm of Zelda’s chair. Prudence and Ambrose were on a sofa, distance between them but with their hands joined, both of them dressed for a fancy tea party. Hilda had her arm around Sabrina on the other sofa, giving her a snuggle.

Nick only realized how he must look when Sabrina’s face became a shattered mirror as she gazed at him. “Nick!”

Ambrose, blithe, waggled the fingers of his free hand in Nick’s direction. “Hey, Nick.”

Sabrina slid right out of Hilda’s arms onto the floor, and hurled herself in Nick’s direction. 

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” said Nick. “I always wanted to be with you. I didn’t know how to be with you, and let you have what you wanted. I didn’t know how to be with you, and not hurt you, but—I can do it now.”

Sabrina laid her hand against his cheek, and Nick covered her hand with his, linking their fingers together. This time he didn’t have to let go. 

“I know,” Sabrina murmured to him, sweet as a song.

They sat on the floor with their hands fast linked, and another voice made Nick flinch.

“I may have suggested demon playmates as a way to cope with fatherhood, Nicholas, but let me make myself clear. Tangling with playmates and paternal teaparties shouldn’t overlap,” Zelda said, very stern. “Change into something less torn and bloodstained immediately.”

“Or should I make you?” Lilith hissed.

Nick flinched, and they all saw him do it. They saw the jarring shudder run through him, as though he was a dog beaten past endurance.

“Aunt Hilda,” Sabrina implored. “Get Harvey!” 

Hilda was on her feet, red shoes a blur, soft voice rising. When she opened the door Nick heard the low chanting of children’s voices, innocent and faraway.

Hilda called: “Oh dear, oh dear, Harvey my love, where are you? Harvey, I think you were right about that nervous breakdown…”

She was barely out of the door when the door slammed against the wall with such force the doorknob cracked plaster. Then the mortal was there, stepping into the circle after all, with them at last.

He went on his knees like Sabrina, on the floor, drawing Nick into his arms. Nick crawled toward him and laid his cheek down against the mortal’s flannel shirt, shuddering once more. Sabrina put her free hand on Nick’s back, drawing a soothing circle. The mortal stroked Nick’s hair, though the blood and broken glass had made a ruin of it, and kissed his hair after.

“Nick,” the mortal whispered into Nick’s hair, soft as the kiss.

Nick could hear the terror in Harvey’s voice, terror that some disaster had happened. And a disaster had.

“I love you,” Nick said, into his shoulder.

In the distance he heard Prudence’s heels hit the floor. “This is frightful. Ambrose! We must instantly depart.”

Whatever happened in the distance didn’t matter. Close up, Harvey said: “I love you, too. That won’t change, no matter what else does. You don’t have to worry about--”

Nick shook his head, burrowing his face into Harvey’s shoulder. He hung on around his mortal’s neck, and he clung onto Sabrina’s hand, and he could have this. He could keep it. He could.

“No. No. Shut up. I don’t want anything to change. I don’t want anything but this. I’m in love with you. I always have been. I love you so much. You make me so happy. I don’t know why, I really don’t. It doesn’t make any sense. Please stop trying to leave.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Book 3 is out and as with Part 3, nothing totally contradicts anything in the story, yay. (Though I now see Nick ever thinking of Harvey by name may be not canon...) Anyway, re-energized on Sabrina and hoping to entertain people's quarantine!

Sabrina drew in a breath sharp as a knife. “Are you trying to leave, Harvey!”

Harvey jerked back. Nick glared at him for going away. Sabrina was already glaring at him, curls falling white around her even-paler face. She was right to glare. Nick understood her stunned look of horror and unhappiness completely. 

“What—no,” said Harvey. “Brina, no, I was just--”

“Why do we ever see these awful people, Ambrose,” murmured Prudence.

“Couldn’t tell you,” Ambrose murmured back. “Aperitif?”

Nick was dimly aware that he’d be embarrassed about this later, the same way he had been when Prudence used to taunt him by singing out ‘You taught me how to love, Spellman!’ at the end of class. For now he had more important things on his mind: he hadn’t been taken back, yet. 

“Hey, I won’t sleep with anyone,” Nick promised Harvey. “Not anyone at all. Kiss me.”

He knew how relationships worked from Sabrina. That was what you said to someone, when you didn’t want them to leave. 

“I don’t want that?” Harvey said helplessly. “Why would you think I want that?” 

Wow, now kissing was forbidden as well as sex? The things Nick had to deal with!

“Probably because he’s having a nervous breakdown, my love?” Hilda suggested from the doorway. 

“—right,” said Harvey. “Oh, God.”

“Oh yes, let’s improve this hideous emotional scene by blasphemously invoking the false god,” Zelda complained.

She was sitting up straight as a sword, Lilith perched on the arm of Zelda’s chair like a green serpent draped around a throne. Nick glared at Lilith and then forgot her, and everyone else, when a low keening cry of distress broke from Sabrina.

“What’s going on?” she demanded, her dark eyes snapping furious in her white face. “Why are you talking about Harvey leaving? He can’t leave. Not again.”

“Brina—” Harvey began.

“Spellman,” said Nick, reaching for her. “Darling.” 

She recoiled from both of their hands. 

“No! You both leave, you both left me. I—I make mistakes, I know that, but I don’t leave, I don’t ever leave, and I thought… once I thought you would never leave me and you proved me wrong. And now Harvey’s leaving and nobody told me, and I’m an idiot again and—and—”

She pressed a fist to her mouth, trying to trap sobs, and Nick got hold of her, stroking her curls back into snowy smoothness.

“Hey,” he told her. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, only hell would have taken me away from you. Nothing less than hell would have done it, and there isn’t any other hell. I won’t ever leave again.” 

“I wasn’t leaving!” said Harvey. “I was just—moving my stuff out of our bedroom so—”

“That’s leaving!” Sabrina shouted. 

Nick put his arm around her and she clung to him desperately. He’d always been aware that was part of what drew her to him: that she was holding onto Nick like someone drowning because Harvey had left. He’d taken it then, and he’d take it now. 

“I wasn’t moving any stuff,” Nick said virtuously. “I wasn’t going anywhere. I don’t know what’s wrong with him. He’s a monster.”

Nick had been warned. Sister Jackson told them all in class that witch-hunters were merciless and remorseless beasts. Nick should have asked follow-up questions, but the one he’d been thinking of at the time was ‘But what should you do if witch-hunters are very cute but will not date you?’ Then Sister Jackson had mysteriously died, so whatever with her.

“I was trying to give Nick space so he could sleep with all the sex demons he wants,” Harvey reported, narrowing his eyes. 

There was a brief silence. Zelda lit up a fresh cigarette and drew in a deep lungful.

“Oh no,” said Sabrina. “Not sex demons again.” 

“Excuse me, this whole revolting spectacle is about sex demons?” Prudence demanded. “Can you people not try to conduct yourselves in an appropriate manner? Watch me. Ambrose, I intend to cavort with sex demons tonight.”

Ambrose smiled behind his glass. “Then I hope you meant ‘Watch me’ as an invitation.”

“There,” said Prudence. “So simple. Why can’t you simply be normal? I shan’t be doing any such thing, incidentally.”

“Sad news for me,” said Ambrose, composed. 

That was nice they’d got back together, Nick thought. He’d believed they would. Ambrose made Prudence so happy. 

“Brina,” said Harvey. “I would never leave you, either. I never did leave you. I—I know after I needed space, you wanted to protect me, and you wanted to be with Nick. Which—which I totally understand. But it wasn’t--” 

Nick pointed at him accusingly. “That is an entirely wrong-headed version of events. You left and then she was trying to protect you, because she is an infernal angel. She did no leaving. You’re the one addicted to it. You leave everyone.”

“No I don’t, Nick.” Harvey sounded at the end of his patience.

“Then explain yourself! Explain this day’s horrible events,” said Nick. “Explain why I had to witness Sabrina crying over you. Explain you leaving me on a magically significant bridge in January, which was an especially hurtful location to be left in--”

He wasn’t supposed to talk about the brief time, in order to protect the mortal from the horror of witches, specifically Nick himself. But surely the mortal recalled something by now. Memory charms didn’t hold up well under reminders, and Nick had been around the mortal a long time. 

Rather than looking horrified or surprised, the heartless mortal rolled his eyes. “Oh my God, you weren’t even dating Sabrina back then. We certainly weren’t dating back then.”

“Well, you think that because I memory charmed you,” Nick argued.

“I think that because we weren’t,” said Harvey. 

“We had five and a half dates and I spent the night!”

“Nothing happened that night.”

“Oh, I see. Everything’s about sex with you, is it,” said Nick. 

Harvey was reduced to open-mouthed silence by the force of Nick’s excellent argument. 

“Speaking of, can we return to the topic of the sex demons?” Sabrina asked in a tight voice.

“I simply will not be blamed for making a reasonable suggestion,” Zelda Spellman announced.

Hilda and Harvey gazed at Zelda with mutual disapproval.

“Aunt Z, what did you do!” Sabrina yelled. 

“Merely tried to help you, Sabrina, as I always do and ever receive no thanks for,” Zelda said sharply. “Something was wrong with Nicholas, that was clear at a glance, and—”

Lilith raised her hand, as though she was now pretending to be a mortal student rather than a mortal teacher. 

“Considering the endless ruin of our whole lives,” she said delicately, “Are we entirely sure this _is_ Mr Scratch?”

Sabrina and Harvey, never alike aside from when they were suicidally furious, turned on her with a shared snarl.

“You go too far, Lilith,” said Sabrina, every inch a queen.

“You think I don’t know Nick when I see him?” snapped Harvey. “Back off.”

Sabrina could handle herself, the tiny badass, but Harvey should keep his fool mouth shut around the mother of demons. Nick appreciated the thought, but he didn’t need any more sick fear than he was already dealing with after Lilith’s sharp question. She was brilliant, used to out-thinking every lord in hell, and she was too close to the truth already. Nick would be found out and sent back. 

If he showed any distress, Sabrina and the mortal would go after Lilith even harder. What was he supposed to do?

“Get up, Nicky,” Prudence commanded, and Nick looked up in immense relief. “I want a word.”

Sabrina was delivering a tirade directed at her aunt. Harvey touched Nick’s hand, his eyes troubled, as Nick went—but he let Nick go. Prudence and Nick walked out onto the Spellmans’ porch, and then Prudence led Nick down to the other side of the house away from the graveyard, where there was a gate and a rose garden looking out onto the mountains. 

“A nurturing soul would clean you up around now,” said Prudence. “As I’m not one, fix yourself.”

Nick did so. Prudence raised her eyebrows at his hair, so Nick re-fixed it. 

“I really thought you were settled down now,” Prudence told him disapprovingly. 

“I am,” said Nick. “I’m trying to be. This isn’t my fault. Fine, or it is, but I know I can—”

Prudence looked bored. “Yes, yes. Everybody gets it. A day spent without Sabrina’s foot on your neck and her sweet voice urging you toward total destruction is a day entirely wasted. Every moment in which that witch-hunter does not tenderly dick you down is an unspeakable horror. We understand, we just don’t want to hear about it any longer because it is both overly dramatic and boring. Which is somewhat of a feat. We all have our inverted crosses to bear. I’m sad that you’re like this in public, and people know we used to go out. It’s embarrassing. Yet I handle it with dignity.”

“Why are you under the impression that I have an active sex life,” said Nick. “Have I said something to you indicating that I did? Because it’s been at least four days.”

“That happens when you have children,” snapped Prudence. “Everybody knows this. Even I had to limit my activities for twelve weeks when Judas was young. Stop whining. This kind of thoughtless babble is why Zelda offered you playmates. Which would be fine—though some find playmates to be tacky—if you wanted playmates and had chosen reasonable partners you could negotiate with, but you didn’t, did you, Nicky? You chose the two most unreasonable people in the world.”

“Sabrina is a glorious chaotic dark angel,” said Nick firmly. “You make fine points about the mortal but there’s nothing I can do.”

Prudence began to tick off solutions on her fingers. “Leave him. Kill him. Ensorcel him. Create a more pliable doppelganger. Abandon him somewhere without his collar on and get a dozen more attractive replacements.”

“Can we go back inside so you can say all this where he can hear you, that will be hilarious,” Nick urged.

Prudence scoffed. “With you hanging off him pulling his pigtails determinedly all the while, I think not, I shall be sick.” 

Since she’d brought up Nick’s relationship, Nick had a question.

“Have you heard we’re getting married?” asked Nick. “Would you like to be my maid of dishonor?”

Prudence paused. “All right,” she said grudgingly. “Congratulations.”

She gave Nick a tiny smile. She enjoyed being chosen, Prudence: preferred things to be official, like a proper family. They were alike that way. Nick gave her a tiny smile back.

“Thanks,” Nick muttered.

“Like I said, if you wanted playmates at all, it would be different, Nick,” Prudence’s voice was slightly gentler, which was still not gentle at all. “But you don’t, do you? You never tangled with them any more than I did, except when you were a wreck. You were simply having some sort of absurd fit because your pair of maniacs weren’t giving you enough loving attention or whatever vile perversion it is you’re into.” 

She held up a forestalling hand. 

“It’s no longer my problem and I won’t hear about it! Talk to your maniacs. In private! Sabrina will listen if you hit her over the head with enough force. And that mortal would like nothing more than to listen to honest and open conversations about mutual strong emoti—pardon me, I was just unwell in my mouth.”

Prudence’s fingers flew to her mouth. She had tiny rubies embedded in her fingernails these days. Seemed like life was going well for her.

“Thanks for taking me out here,” said Nick. “I… know you told Sabrina not to be with me, after I came back from hell. Thanks for changing your mind.”

It had hurt. He’d thought Prudence liked him, a little. At least, more than Harvey. But then, he’d never thought Prudence liked him that much. She’d given up on him, and that made sense to him. Even if it hurt.

Prudence sighed. “You embarrassed me, getting me to help you with a girl because you were Satan’s minion. I thought you were for real.”

Prudence didn’t trust men, aside from Ambrose, and even that was hard for her. 

“I was for real,” Nick said quietly. “I was just… bad at it.” 

“All right, Nicky,” Prudence told him. “Do better now. Tell them the truth.”

She turned away with a sniff. Nick was left unable to go back inside, because he couldn’t possibly do that. Telling the truth meant no more Sabrina and no more mortal. It meant Prudence wrecked over her sisters and crying every night without Ambrose, and still hating Nick a little for betraying Sabrina. 

He stayed outside, closing his eyes against the sunlight. He didn’t want to be alone but he couldn’t go back there, under the gaze of Lilith who saw too much and Sabrina who trusted him too much. It reminded him of the first day when he was finally home from hell but felt scraped raw and as if he would scream under the weight of eyes, fleeing the Spellman house. Sabrina had said she would stay with him, and he’d let himself hope, but she’d had to leave him. He’d told her she should. Hell and earth hung in the balance, and he didn’t count. He’d told himself he could wait for her, but as the day went on and he felt more and more like breaking down, the chainsaw started to seem like a good idea.

The chainsaw hadn’t been a good idea. 

Leaning against the roses growing up the wall, and feeling the thorns pierce his skin, wouldn’t be a good idea either. Nick wasn’t under Satan’s influence any longer and he had to make better choices. He only had himself, in the end. Even if he didn’t want himself much. 

“Hey, love,” said his mortal, in a soft, tentative voice. “I wanted to see how you were.”

Nick opened his eyes. It always irritated him, just looking at the mortal. He looked soft, looked like relief, but Nick couldn’t have it and didn’t deserve it. 

“Fine,” Nick ground out between locked teeth.

“I’m…” said the mortal. “I’m really sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Nick snapped. Was he taken back yet, or not?

“Will you come here?”

Nick approached, cautiously. He couldn’t help but think of Amalia, when he’d done something wrong—but no, the mortal would never. Not even with Nick, no matter what Nick did wrong.

The mortal got hold of Nick’s elbow and drew him in, so Nick could rest his forehead down on the mortal’s shoulder. Nick wasn’t sure why he was getting this, when the mortal was angry and maybe still trying to leave, but he stayed quiet where the mortal had put him and breathed in. The mortal’s arms went around Nick. 

“I think maybe we need to talk,” the mortal suggested. 

No, thank you. Nick didn’t like the sound of that at all. That sounded like being broken up with, and this felt like being forgiven.

“What if we didn’t talk about anything and agreed that everything was all right, and you took me back?” 

“I never--You’re really freaking me out here,” the mortal said into his hair. 

Nick’s hands fisted in the worn material of his shirt. “I’ll do better.” 

“No…” said the mortal. 

“What do you want to hear? ‘I’ll do worse?’” Nick snarled. “Tell me what to say, then. I’ll say it. You’re impossible. Witch-hunters are—”

Harvey made a soothing sound, nosing at Nick’s hair, drawing a little circle on Nick’s back with those artist hands. Oh, this was nice.

“Awful. Remorseless,” Nick murmured. “Don’t go.”

“I won’t,” promised Harvey. 

Nick forced himself to think back to earlier, to his hateful future self. The guy had managed to make this work for years. Surely some of the wisdom he’d dropped would be useful.

“I know I have to be careful and not presume too much,” said Nick. “I’ll do that. Don’t worry.”

“What?” asked Harvey, a note of sharp alarm in his voice. “Nick. What are you talking about?”

Was Future Nick wrong about everything? Everyone was stupid in the future! Nick was so tired. 

Harvey’s whole body had gone tense. He was trying to draw away, though he couldn’t go far because Nick wasn’t letting him. Still, the mortal’s face had gone all unhappy. It was awful. 

“Careful with—with what?” 

He couldn’t say ‘I don’t know, this was my future self’s theory, and we can’t ask him because I put him to sleep for a hundred years.’ Nick stared, helpless. 

“With Sabrina?”

Nick was sure he knew the answer to this. “With you and Sabrina.”

“But… Nick, why would you have to be careful with me?”

“Obviously I do have to be careful,” snapped Nick. “You have many feelings and also you might die if anyone even stabs you lightly.”

“I would prefer not to be stabbed,” Harvey admitted. 

“I will never permit you to be stabbed,” Nick promised him. “There. What else do you want?”

Sabrina was so great at this. She’d said she wanted Nick to be her boyfriend and not interact with the Weird Sisters and support her in all things and hold her hand, and once Nick did that he could be with her. The mortal was horribly bad at making his demands. Well, the man was an idiot, what else did Nick expect?

The mortal drew Nick back in, which was a reward for not letting him be stabbed, Nick supposed. Nick closed his eyes and held on, grateful for his reward.

“Well, I’d—I’d prefer if you didn’t sleep with anyone but me and Sabrina.”

This whole ‘sleeping with me and Sabrina’ thing seemed to be purely hypothetical. But Nick had already got into plenty of trouble about that and he wasn’t bringing it up again. He only nodded.

“I—I do get how witches are,” said Harvey. “And I’m sorry if you feel trapped, or if I jumped to conclusions. I thought maybe you didn’t wanna be tied down.”

“Wait, being tied down was an option?” Nick demanded. “Why didn’t you tell me!”

“Um. That’s not literal. It’s a mortal phrase.”

Typical. Mortals were such teases. But Nick was willing to put up with all this nonsense, so that was fine too. 

“And I’d prefer if you tell us when something is wrong, or if you feel awful. What would you prefer?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Nick murmured. “It’s fine. I can do all of that. I’m—happy with all of that. You be happy too. Stay.”

There. Was that enough? 

“Yeah, except it does matter, Nick!” 

Apparently not.

“I would prefer for you not to leave.”

“I won’t leave,” the mortal promised.

That was a major victory. The mortal did try to keep his promises. 

“I would prefer for you to kiss me,” said Nick.

The mortal was very bad at obeying, even when he was trying. Instead of kissing Nick properly, he leaned in and laid a light rain of kisses on random places: Nick's nose, his closed eyes. He was so strange. Where did he come up with things like this? Nick smiled, and tilted his face up for more sunlight and more kisses. 

“I would prefer to get married,” Nick mumbled. 

“Okay,” said Harvey. “Sure.”

He sounded like he was smiling, too. This was how the mortals tricked you. They were all soft and nice and smiling and happy, and you were happy too, and then they abandoned you or burned you at the stake or some other equally horrible thing. Well, Nick hadn’t been brought up properly and he couldn’t be blamed for falling into mortal clutches: it wasn’t Nick’s fault. 

“What else?” asked Harvey. “I want to fix whatever’s wrong, here. Is there… would you like more time alone?”

“No!” Nick snapped.

“Or… more affection, or…”

Nick frowned. “What, I just come bother you and demand affection whenever I want?”

“Yeah,” said Harvey. “Of course.”

That didn’t sound right, annoying people when they had better things to do, but it wasn’t Nick’s problem if the mortal wanted to make rash offers. Nick nodded uncertainly.

“What else?” asked Harvey.

“I don’t know,” said Nick, helpless. “I don’t want to mess this up, and I’m into all these unspeakably bizarre things—”

“Um,” said Harvey. “What—what weird stuff are we talking about? Maybe we can work something out. Um, if it’s hurting you, that has to be Sabrina, because I really can’t—”

Nick blinked at him. 

“This stuff,” he explained, making an illustrative gesture in the space between them.

“Ah,” said Harvey. “Well, we’re all different. Okay, I’m sorry. That’s enough for now. But Nick, please try to talk about what you want so we can talk about how to make things right. That’s what being married means.”

“I’ve seen no evidence of this. Father Blackwood married people constantly,” said Nick.

“I was thinking we would not be anything like Father Blackwood at all, ever,” said the mortal.

Nick nodded. Seemed like a good plan to him. 

“Okay,” said Harvey, gently, and detached against Nick’s clearly expressed wishes. “You ready to go back inside? Brina will be worried.”

Sabrina couldn’t be worried.

“One more thing,” said Nick. 

This was definitely going to seal the deal on being taken back. Nick turned toward the roses climbing the Spellman walls, and touched one velvet-soft red one in full bloom, then murmured an obscure spell he’d found among ancient alchemical texts in Future Nick’s library. It was a Midas variant: easy enough, if you were adequately skilled.

The rose shimmered as if full of dewdrops, then the radiance spread and crystallized as the rose petals all turned into petal-shaped diamonds. The sparkling rose dropped neatly into Nick’s hand, then he offered it to his mortal. 

A brilliant solution to mortals wanting flowers and diamonds, if Nick did say so himself. Now the flower wouldn’t die, either. Nick congratulated himself on this stroke of genius.  
Harvey’s face was very surprised. Of course Future Nick had never done this. He was an inconsiderate evil being who shouldn’t be allowed have a mortal. 

“For you,” Nick said, clarifying.

Harvey continued to look surprised. Nick wished he would be done with being surprised, and start with the being pleased, and smiling for Nick, and praising him also. Not every witch could do this.

The mortal might not know that. Possibly Nick should tell him.

“Um…” said Harvey. “Thank… you.”

Nick nodded. “You’re welcome.”

The mortal took the diamond rose, and put it in the pocket of his awful flannel shirt. He still seemed not to know what to say. It was starting to make Nick feel uneasy. The mortal hadn’t wanted Sabrina’s magic present either, back in Nick’s own time. Did the rose upset him because it was magic? Or was the poor little mortal not used to getting presents at all? That might be it, considering his awful father. That was too sad. 

It must be that, and not the magic, because after a long pause, the mortal started to smile again. He touched his pocket where the rose was, then reached out for Nick’s hand.

“Hey, you total weirdo,” murmured Harvey. “I love you very much.”

Nick smiled, rewarded. Seemed like Father Blackwood and Prudence had been absolutely right about mortals enjoying flowers and diamonds. 

“You can have as many as you want,” he promised indulgently. The mortal was his now: Nick would take care of him.

“You know, uh… one’s enough,” said Harvey. 

“Are you trying to be monogamous with a flower,” said Nick. “This is a sickness, Harry.”

Harvey laughed, which was a sweet sound but addressed none of Nick’s concerns. Why did this have to be what the mortal was into? Nick would have been ready to cater to anything normal, like whips and chains.

Sabrina, coming around the building, brightened at the sound of Harvey’s laugh.

“Is everything okay?” 

She had an adorably trusting heart. She’d believe Nick if he said yes, and not ask weird questions about preferences.

“Maybe,” said Harvey, the difficult one. “What would you guys think of getting Nick to talk to a counselor?”

“That they would think Nick was mentally unwell when he said he could do magic?” said Sabrina.

“Idiot,” added Nick, with affection.

The mortal scowled at Nick, then bit his lip. 

“He keeps talking about stuff that happened back when we were kids,” said the mortal, and Nick’s blood ran cold as a river of ice. “Do you—do you think this is regression? This must be about being king of hell.” 

Sabrina’s lip wobbled. The mortal upset her constantly!

“So this is my fault?”

“No, not at all,” Nick said. 

“I didn’t say that,” said Harvey. “But ’Brina, he can’t keep doing it if it’s hurting him. I’ll do it instead.”

Sabrina and Nick stared at the mortal. There he went, Nick thought. It shouldn’t even surprise Nick by now. Harvey was always like this. Yes I would enjoy being sacrificed by pagans, yes I would enjoy chopping off my own head. It was like owning a lemming. Every day you had to urge him back from the cliff.

“I want to do it!” Nick exclaimed. “I’m sorry I’ve been—” what had the mortal said—“—weird. But I think, the regression is… good for me? I’m, um—” mortal words, mortal words “—processing!” Nick said triumphantly. “Being king of hell will be ultimately—”

“Therapeutic?” offered Sabrina, brightening again. 

Nick stepped forward, keeping hold of Harvey’s hand, and kissed her beautiful mouth. “Exactly. I shall process. Therapeutically.”

“I believe in you, Nick,” Sabrina told him. So cute, and obviously relieved Harvey wouldn’t be king of hell. “And I know you’ll work out what Caliban’s up to! Didn’t you say your informant would show up any day now?”

“My… informant,” said Nick. 

“Sabnock?” said Harvey. “Dude with the tentacles. Very formal. Always showing up at the door requesting an audience with the king of hell.”

Oh Hecate, Nick had slammed the door on a vital source of help and information.

“Yes indeed,” announced Nick. “Hell is going great.”

Amazingly, he appeared to be getting away with this. He could locate the tentacled gentleman later.

“I’m sorry I scared you, ’Brina,” Harvey told her, in his quiet way. “I never meant to do that.”

“You can do anything, as long as you don’t leave,” Sabrina said.

She was so intelligent. Why she went for the mortal was a mystery: opposites attracted, Nick supposed.

She looked up at them affectionately, her white hair diamond-brilliant set against the red roses, then stood on tiptoe to kiss the mortal on his softly smiling mouth. Nick had seen this before, but when he was distracted with thoughts like _will she never love me and always him_ , or _am I about to get laid?_ He took a moment to simply appreciate it now, without the fear of being left behind and unloved. 

"We had our first kiss here," Harvey murmured to Sabrina.

"Oh," said Sabrina. "I remember."

Sabrina with her nails painted dark as Prudence’s, small strong hands on the mortal’s broad shoulders. Both of them so loving, and so pretty. Nick wouldn’t mind seeing more of this.

When Sabrina went down off her tiptoes, Harvey squinted suspiciously over at Nick.

“Why are you smirking?”

“Huh, am I,” said Nick.

“Get away, you’re awful,” said Harvey, shoving him, but not hard, not as if he really wanted Nick to go. 

Sabrina came and took Nick’s free hand, pressing her smiling mouth against the side of Nick’s jaw.

“I’m so happy you’re all right,” she told him. “I’m so, so happy.”

And Nick had been right to enchant his future self. Prudence was wrong, he was right to lie to them. Everything he’d ever won for himself, he’d won by lying, and he was going to keep lying. Because he was so, so happy too.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a rogue pairing appears

Nick had about three minutes of being happy, before Sabrina dropped his hand.

“I have to go apologize to Aunt Z,” she said gloomily. “I called her an interfering harridan and then Lilith called me an officious and judgmental little brat.”

“Come with me, Nick,” Harvey said, encouraging. 

Nick started to smile.

“The rest of us are playing games,” the mortal continued. “You haven’t seen Roz or Theo yet.”

Nick stopped smiling, but Harvey was already making his way through the Spellman front door and down the passage, a beautiful idiot who didn’t seem to comprehend Nick’s very simple wishes. He didn’t want to see that girl! He didn’t want Harvey anywhere near her!

Every time he saw Roz made Nick re-live yet another moment in his life when he’d been traumatically betrayed. He’d been taken by complete surprise that time, too. He remembered that day clearly: his plan had been to get grimly drunk in Dorian’s bar, and possibly later give Dorian a joyless blowjob. Sabrina only cared about hell and not him anymore, and if he got drunk enough perhaps he could sleep without dreams that night. Not a great day, but at least nothing new. It was a nasty shock to be summoned by the mortals to save Harvey from being virgin-sacrificed. 

Nick had found their whole explanation difficult to understand. Roz obviously wanted to sleep with the mortal, but then virgin sacrifice became the town hobby and suddenly Roz wouldn’t sleep with him after all? Nick couldn’t believe her attitude. For what reason, because the mortal loved Sabrina, something that had been obvious the whole time? From what   
Nick gathered, Robin had instantly banged Theo to save Theo’s life, yet Robin had been willing to sacrifice Theo himself the week before. Roz and the mortal had been friends for a decade, but denial and egotism was worth letting the mortal _die_? She called that love?

Then matters had got so bad they’d had to call Nick in for help? Someone who the mortal barely tolerated, at best? What a total disaster. It was all Roz’s fault. Nick didn’t plan to forgive her, now or ever. 

Roz was no better than a murderer. A no-sex murderer, Nick’s least favorite kind of murderer.

Nick followed Harvey into the games room. There were mortals everywhere, all around Nick’s child. Diana was playing cards with Theo and seemed happy enough, but Nick suspected she’d inherited Sabrina and Harvey’s extreme affinity for danger.

Roz was there. She was holding a baby in her arms. 

A baby! Nick had never seen a more blatant mortal-seduction attempt in his life. 

To Nick’s horror but dull lack of surprise, the seduction attempt instantly worked.

“Look, the little man’s awake,” murmured the mortal, his voice gone all soft and sweet. 

He abandoned Nick so he could go crouch on the floor and look up at Roz and the baby with loathsome devotion. 

“Oh hey, Roz,” said Nick. He let his tone say ‘Murderer’ for him. 

Roz blinked up at him. She appeared confused, as though she expected Nick to approve her wish to seduce and murder Nick’s betrothed.

“Hi Nick?” she said uncertainly. “Wanna hold the baby, Harvey?”

Wow, Nick was standing right there! Wow, this was how preachers of the false god raised their daughters! 

This was just like the time she’d touched Harvey’s hand in that mortal cafe—emotional intimacy in a public place! Disgusting!—and made Sabrina look sad. At the time Nick had been angry Sabrina was sad, but since the mortal hated Nick he thought maybe it was fine if Roz took the mortal away. She’d take care of him and stuff and make him happy, and Nick could have Sabrina. Whatever, Nick and Sabrina wouldn’t miss the idiot. 

But now the mortal had come around, and Nick knew Roz actually wouldn’t take care of the mortal, so she could back right off.

“The baby looks comfortable where it is,” Nick said, forcing his voice smooth instead of sharp. “Get up, stupid mortal—I mean, darling. Sit in a chair.”

He grabbed the mortal by the back of his awful shirt and yanked him backward, away from the baby. The mortal shot him a quizzical look. Nick bared his teeth.

Nick hadn’t even been able to scold Roz at the virgin-sacrifice time because firstly, it would’ve seemed like Nick cared if the mortal lived or died and that was shameful, secondly, there was no opportunity because of descending pagans, and thirdly, Nick had been occupied trying to think how to tactfully, persuasively word his own offer to the mortal. ‘I can solve your problem, give me five minutes, except for the sake of my reputation give me half an hour’ probably wouldn’t have worked—but what if it had? 

Last time Sabrina, beautiful, loving and brilliant soul that she was, had solved the sacrifice problem. But Sabrina thought the best of those she loved, so Nick didn’t think she’d realized how much Roz was to blame for the mortal almost dying. Sabrina could get wrapped up in plans, and lose sight of people.

The next attempt at mortal-murdering madness wouldn’t occur on Nick’s watch.

“Something up?” Harvey asked in a low voice.

“He’s right, Harv,” said Theo. “You’re always trying to sit on the floor. I promise we won’t be intimidated by you looming over us. Chairs are good, too.”

Theo was the smart one! Nick favored him with a smile. Nick liked Theo. It was fine that Diana was playing with Theo, after all. 

“Snap!” said Diana, and the cards snapped on Theo’s hand like alligator jaws. Diana giggled.

“Augh, witches,” said Theo, nursing his hand.

The mortal laughed, looking over at Diana and Theo tenderly. 

See, Nick thought. Diana was still cute, even if she wasn’t a baby anymore. The mortal should focus on her.

The mortal glanced over at Nick—also acceptable—and touched Nick’s elbow. The touch felt like a question somehow. Nick didn’t know what the question was, or how to answer it, but he did notice something he’d been too frayed to be sure of before. 

The mortal was still wearing his ring. He had been the whole time.

Okay. Nick sighed. Everything was okay.

“Want to sit down?” the mortal asked. 

The mortal was asking what Nick wanted. It was a little awkward to say it, but if the mortal really wanted to know…

“Affection me,” said Nick.

“Oh,” said the mortal, sounding startled.

Nick wasn’t the one who’d come up with the demented plan to have affection granted to him whenever he wanted. Nick had known the idea was excessive and wouldn’t work!   
The mortal turned a little, and framed Nick’s face in his hands, giving him a serious, sweet look.

“Hey,” he said, drawing Nick down for a kiss. “I love you.”

All right, Nick thought. Maybe the system might work. 

The other mortals were giving them funny looks, as well they might. This was definitely a lot of emotional intimacy for a fairly public place. The mortal had no sense of emotional decorum.

Nick wrapped his arms around the mortal’s neck and glared over the mortal’s head at Roz, who Nick had once believed would at least take elementary precautions and keep the mortal safe. But no. She wouldn’t. And the mortal couldn’t be trusted to simply have sex with Roz like a reasonable person and come right back. 

Let them sleep together even once more, then they’d be all in love again, but despite claiming to be in love Roz wouldn’t care enough to protect the mortal. So he would die.   
It was clear Nick had to stay by the mortal and monitor him at all times. So he did. Even though he didn’t want to be with Roz. Even though Theo was eyeing Nick in a way that suggested the mortal had told Theo about the sex demons, and Theo was mad. Even though it meant Nick, in order to make the mortal stay in his damn chair, was counterfeiting a physical display of emotional intimacy and that was shocking and embarrassing and Nick was making a spectacle of himself and the mortal must be wondering what was going on. It was still better than the alternative. 

Sacrifices must be made.

Not human ones.

Once Diana was finished playing cards, she went to admire the baby. Roz let Diana hold him, and the mortal was clearly transported with joy at the sight.

“I like a baby,” announced Diana, who definitely got that from the mortal. “Daddy and Nick and Sabrina and I are going to have two babies.”

There was a strange silence.

“Uh,” said Harvey. “What?”

“Twins,” Diana clarified. 

Nick froze.

“Oh, congratulations, Harvey!” said Roz. “And Nick too! I have to find Sabrina…”

Stop causing trouble, Roz! Why was she always causing trouble? Nick couldn’t believe Roz had once been his favorite. She didn’t have to find Sabrina! Nick had to find Sabrina!

“Wait, Sabrina’s having twins and they… didn’t _tell_ you, Harv?” Theo asked, his voice gone sharp. He was the mortal’s defender, Nick understood that, but he could also back off. 

Go away, mortals. Nick had nothing against Theo personally but he remembered that the mortal had picked Theo and Roz, back then. Even though it broke Sabrina’s heart. He loved them too much. He might pick them again. 

“It’s up to Sabrina who to tell first!” Harvey said. He turned his head and looked up at Nick. “I’m not mad,” he assured Nick. “It’s okay. I get it.”

Nick stared at him in panic. He didn’t know what the mortal got. He didn’t know how he was supposed to get two babies. 

“Hey,” said Harvey. “I’m—I’m thrilled. It’s really great news.”

He gave Nick a kiss. Nick appreciated the affection but was still in an awful situation. Plus Theo and Roz were both glaring at him. The nerve of Roz. When had Nick ever allowed someone to be virgin-sacrificed?

“Harvey, hold the baby,” said Roz, taking the baby from Nick’s daughter and shoving the child at Nick’s mortal before Nick could prevent her.

The mortal’s startled expression turned into one of absorbed tenderness. 

“Hi,” he said, in his dumb, pretty voice. He held onto the baby’s fat hand. “You look just like Rosalind,” he told the baby. “And you’re smart like her, aren’t you? Aren’t you?”

Something had to be done, or the mortal would marry Roz. Nick didn’t know how to ask someone to be monogamous… or wait, no, that wasn’t the word because Sabrina was there… was the word ‘committed’? 

Right, that made sense, people said ‘committed’ because it was all so insane. Committed to an asylum. Committed to a relationship. Committed to a senseless and destructive course of action. That was it.

“Come with me,” said Roz between her teeth, and dragged Nick away from the mortal, then into the hall where she wheeled on him. “That’s enough, Nick!”

Nick raised an eyebrow. “What’s enough, _Rosalind_?”

Everyone got a pet name. The mortal dealt them out like they were nothing.

“I never liked any of this from the start,” snapped Roz. “I—I know I treated Harvey badly.”

 _What did you do?_ Nick wanted to snarl, but Future Nick would know. Anyway, it wasn’t like it was a surprise. A girl who’d let someone be virgin-sacrificed would do anything.

“And when you three started your—thing, I knew he was broken-hearted and out of his mind, and Sabrina never knows when to stop, and you scooped him up as a mortal toy to amuse yourself and Sabrina with—”

“Ah, like the time he was broken-hearted and out of his mind, and you scooped him up?” Nick asked sweetly. 

Roz went red. “No! That wasn’t—I love—”

“You loved the idea of having what your best friend had,” said Nick. “I remember the Weird Sisters fighting over a piece of jewelry or a specially nice skull, just because the other one was holding it. You adored the idea of being loved the way he loves her. And then it wasn’t like you imagined, so you threw it back.”

It wasn’t Nick’s fault Roz was an ungrateful wench who threw away nice things and let them be sacrificed!

“I am Sabrina’s best friend,” snapped Roz. “She told me all about you, and how you offered to share her with Harvey the third time you guys met!”

Nick had tried to phrase it nicely. He hadn’t known when the appropriate time to ask might be! He’d done his best. He’d asked Prudence to advise him but she’d just laughed and laughed and told him to go ahead and do it.

Roz drew in a breath. “So you got your twisted little arrangement,” she said. “And I knew I’d hurt him and I didn’t get a say. I had to watch while he got treated like a third-class citizen in his own relationship, because that’s what mortals are to you people, and Sabrina couldn’t even see it. You’re always nasty to me, and I don’t even know why, and you make it pretty clear you don’t care much about him. Today was the first day I’ve ever seen you kiss him sober. Now you and Sabrina did this huge thing without telling him. And I’m not even surprised.”

She spoke to him furiously, but Nick actually appreciated the information. Not about Future Nick, that jerk, who made the mortal unhappy. But about how it’d happened.

Just like last time, then. The mortal needed to believe someone loved him. He’d thought for some mad reason that Sabrina had stopped, and his mind had snapped and he’d clung to Roz like a drowning swimmer. Back then the mortal had fully deluded himself, against all the evidence of infernal spellcraft, that he was in love with Roz. 

She’d got tired of the mortal, and dropped him. Nick didn’t even like to think about how that must have been. At least when the mortal hurt Sabrina, she had her family, and she had Nick, anytime she wanted. 

The mortal, left all alone, had gone even more deranged than usual and now was deluding himself that he loved Nick. 

And Nick thought that was fine, if other people would stop interfering. Nick wasn’t like Roz. Nick would take care of him. He would never permit him to be sacrificed. He wouldn’t get tired of being loved.

He would locate twins if he had to.

“We all make mistakes, Roz,” said Nick. 

Roz flushed. “Is this a crack about the baby!”

“Well—” said Nick.

“You know his father’s not involved in our lives,” said Roz. 

His what? Nick began to have a horrible suspicion. Had Roz already got her claws back into the mortal?

“I never see Caliban,” Roz added.

“Caliban!” Nick shouted. “ _Roz_!”

Roz squinted. “Why do you seem surprised?”

“I’m surprised every time I think about it,” Nick replied truthfully. 

Lilith and Zelda! Roz and Caliban! Him and the mortal! The future was wild.

Roz looked irritated. That was great. Annoying people was a good way to distract them: Nick used it on the mortal often.

“And I’m surprised that you’re being judgmental about me, when I am in a… committed… relationship with good and beautiful people, and you had a baby with Caliban!”

“I made a mistake,” admitted Roz.

“Well, I didn’t,” said Nick. “I love Sabrina. And I… love him.”

“Harvey,” said Roz.

“Whatever,” said Nick. It was obvious in context.

“You do realize that you can’t even look me in the eye when you say that,” Roz snapped. “You’re obviously lying.”

Hey, Nick was an excellent and convincing liar. Usually. And yes he was lying, but so what? He was doing it to make the mortal happy. The mortal wished to be loved, so Nick would say he did. Everybody could be happy.

Nick diverted from the topic. “Caliban, huh? You really don’t get tired of snatching at Sabrina’s things, do you? Hands off me, thanks so much.”

Lips that permitted virgin sacrifice would never touch his.

Roz raised a hand to slap him.

“Roz!” Sabrina exclaimed, sounding horrified, and ran down the hall toward them. 

“Sabrina, thank Hecate you’re here, what would you think about having another baby?” asked Nick.

Sabrina blinked. “What?”

“Or two,” said Nick.

“What?” said Roz. 

Obviously lost and in search of certainty, Sabrina’s eyes went to the door of the playroom. She moved forward, and the door swung open to reveal Theo and Harvey having an intense discussion while Harvey twirled the diamond rose in front of the baby’s eyes to amuse him. Wow, that was Nick’s romantic offering, it was not for Caliban’s stupid baby! 

Harvey was telling Theo earnestly, “—you see, I think it was my fault for—”

“—listen to what you’re saying, Harv, _you_ weren’t being affectionate enough in a relationship? It just isn’t realistic—”

The mortal turned toward the door opening, and lit up at the sight of Sabrina.

“Brina!” He left Theo’s side, and came to her, folding her up in his free arm and then drawing back so he could touch her hair. “I just heard. Brina, it’s—it’s such good news. I’m so happy.”

“That’s good, Harvey.” Sabrina smiled, stroking the mortal’s collar as she spoke. “But… um… why?”

“Daddy is happy about the two babies we are going to get,” said Diana. “I knew he would be, when I came up with the idea.” 

There was another strange silence.

“… Oh,” said Harvey. “Okay. Kids say weird stuff.”

“You thought I was having twins and I hadn’t told you?” Sabrina demanded. “That would be a terrible thing to do! Do you think I’m terrible?”

“No!” said Harvey.

“Weeeelll,” said Theo.

“Sometimes in a cool and sexy way,” said Nick. 

Sabrina glared at all of them. “I would never, Harvey. Nick would never. Neither of us would ever dream of excluding you like that. And by the way I can’t have any more children for some time, I have my council of goddesses to run!”

Everyone mentally pivoted away from the imaginary twins.

“Oh, right,” said Roz. “How’s that going, Sabrina?”

“Great!” Sabrina told her. “Nick suggested we throw a party for the goddesses, so that’s happening tomorrow.”

“Wait,” said Nick and Harvey, in unison. “What?”

“Actually now I come to think of it,” said Sabrina. “I need to go invite the goddesses now. You guys will come, right? It’s so good to see you. Don’t go in the other room, Lilith and I had a fight and now it’s snowing indoors. My gosh, give your auntie Sabrina a kiss.”

She dropped a kiss on the head of Roz’s (and Caliban’s!) baby, then took the baby out of Harvey’s arms and put him in Roz’s. Great decision, Nick approved of taking the baby away.  
Harvey carefully tucked his rose away in his shirt pocket and drifted toward Nick. Taking the baby away had instant good results.

“I did suggest a party but I didn’t think it would be tomorrow,” Nick clarified. “She is a whirlwind, our girl.”

Harvey smiled, the little happy smile he smiled before a kiss. “She is.”

“Affection, please,” said Nick, experimentally, and Harvey touched his hair. 

In a nice way, though Prudence said Nick shouldn’t mess his hair up. But the mortal was allowed, if he really wanted to. 

“More affection than that.”

The mortal kissed him, smiling the little happy smile. Nick was viciously glad Roz had dumped him and broken his heart, and that he’d gone deranged. 

Roz must have really hurt the mortal, to make him that desperate. He hadn’t even liked Nick before. The boy who saw beauty in everything, except for Nick.

The mortal was the first to see the truth. The mortal had seen what Nick only learned later: that there was something terribly wrong with Nick. So wrong that the mortal wanted nothing to do with him at all. It made Nick miserable every time he thought about it.

But now it was all right. So maybe Nick would forgive Roz on the sacrifice issue. He still shepherded Harvey away from Roz carefully, though, and didn’t relax until they were all safe out on the porch together. Sabrina scolded Diana about the imaginary twins, but Diana seemed unrepentantly certain she’d done no wrong. That was going to be a whole Zelda and Sabrina thing, someday soon. 

“I’ll meet you guys back home after I see the goddesses,” Sabrina proposed. 

“Sure, we’ll take the truck,” said the mortal.

“We will not,” said Nick. “Diana is a helpless child!”

“I like to go in the truck,” said Diana, Sabrina and Harvey’s child all over, a total addict to danger.

Sabrina tripped lightly down the steps.

“Oh, Nick, by the way?” she called. “We were talking about the demon Sabnock before. I remembered that book you got recently, the black-bound one about arcane summonings from the fourteenth century? Doesn’t one of those summonings call back any demon from any circle of hell?”

Nick began to smile. He knew the book Sabrina must mean. 

Had Future Nick acquired that book? Good for him. In a hundred years, Nick might thank the guy. Before Future Nick murdered him.

“Great idea,” he called after Sabrina. “Thanks, Spellman!”

They exchanged a look—wonderful to be alive in a time when there were so many intricate spells to be done, and someone to delight in power with!—then Sabrina danced away across the grass with the light in her white hair. 

Nick turned back to see the mortal watching them, clearly baffled but endeared. 

“You must have wondered why I was acting that way before,” Nick said, experimentally.

Harvey blinked. “Because… we had a fight and you’re happy we’re not in a fight anymore?” 

“… Sure,” said Nick.

They could go with that. Somehow Nick was certain Harvey wouldn’t be responsive to Nick saying ‘Roz abandoned you to die once already,’ even though it was plain fact. 

“I’m happy too,” said Harvey. 

Nick smiled up at him. So entirely deranged, but so sweet. 

The mortal took Diana’s hand in his, and they began to go down the porch steps, still under the deeply mistaken impression they were getting in that awful truck. Nick lingered on the porch. Sabrina had once told him he was there for her, holding her hand, on this porch. It was a lucky place.

He swallowed and ventured, “Would you say that you love me… almost as much as Roz and Theo?” 

“What?” said the mortal blankly. 

Nick didn’t know why he always had to push his luck.

The mortal nodded to Diana, dropped her hand and came back up the porch steps to Nick, approaching with care as though he was a proper witch-hunter trying to get the drop on Nick. 

“I’m sorry,” said the mortal.

“No, it’s fine—” Nick began.

“I didn’t realize you didn’t know,” said the mortal. 

He took Nick by the collar of his shirt, holding on with both hands, and kissed him there without Nick asking, on the Spellman porch in the warm air scented with roses that had bloomed when Harvey and Sabrina first kissed. 

Then he murmured: “I love you more.”

Well, Nick thought, and smiled down at the deck of the lucky porch. Well. Even more deranged than he’d thought. 

Of course, Nick couldn’t and didn’t and would never love a mortal. Sabrina was the one brave enough to throw her heart into an abyss. Loving someone who would be lost, so soon and for all eternity… Nick had suffered plenty without that. It would be insanity and Nick wasn’t insane.

But if he could, he knew which one it would be.

He permitted the mortal to put them in his death trap, and take them home.  
\--  
When the mortal took Diana up to bed to tuck her in and sing to her, Nick went to his library to find the book of arcane summonings. He located it fast, but found it was four thousand pages long. This was going to be a full night’s reading.

Nick climbed onto the velvet sofa and got started. He was deep into chapter three, and had found an extremely fascinating spell about dark mirror transformations, when the door creaked open. The mortal was there, already looking a little drowsy and rumpled, wearing a faded mortal-sports shirt and plaid flannel pajama pants. 

“You’re dressed for bed,” said Nick, then regretful: “But not in the half shirt.”

“Please shut up about that shirt,” sighed Harvey.

“I liked it,” said Nick.

Harvey rolled his eyes. “I don’t have abs like I did when I was sixteen.”

“Well, let me see,” suggested Nick. 

What he could see intimated that what he couldn’t was pretty good. 

The mortal scoffed as though Nick was making a joke, but then came toward Nick and sat down on the sofa, looping a strong arm around Nick’s shoulders. Nick squinted over at him. The mortal had got dressed for bed, but then he hadn’t gone to bed. He’d come to find Nick instead. 

“What do you want…?” Nick asked. Faintly hopeful, he suggested: “Sexual favors?”

“Wow, you really don’t want to do research, huh,” remarked Harvey. “But you have to. You said it was important.”

“Yes, but…” said Nick. “I do have to do this reading, but… why are you here…”

“What?” asked Harvey.

Did Harvey want a spell done for him? Or perhaps he wanted to be entertained, the way Dorian or the Weird Sisters sometimes did, with tricks or sparkling conversation? It was important not to bore people, and vital to be useful, but Nick wasn’t sure what the mortal was getting at here.

“Am I distracting you, should I go?” 

“No!” Nick snapped. “Don’t do that! Just… If you tell me what you want, I’ll do it.” 

“You don’t have to do anything,” said Harvey. “I just want to be with you.”

Occasionally, during the time Sabrina was Nick’s girlfriend and not the mortal’s, she’d seemed a little startled when she was reading and Nick took himself off so he wouldn’t bother her. He would’ve stayed, if he’d known what she wanted him to do, but this hadn’t occurred to him.

His time with the wolves had taught him to how to move unseen, so he could hear what he needed to hear—where Lucifer was imprisoned, Sabrina telling the mortal you’re always there to catch me—and that let him follow Sabrina’s mortals, so he could look after them. Possibly he looked in on the mortal most: he was the most important one. To Sabrina. 

It had been winter still, then, snow on the ground in late February. But the mortal looked warm enough in his house, through the yellow square of his window. Nick would monitor him singing his dumb songs and drawing his stupid pictures, all happy and warm.

If he’d been allowed to come in out of the cold. If the mortal would’ve been pleased he was there. If Nick could have slept, perhaps, on the mortal’s stupid blue plaid bed and not dreamed of Satan.

He would have liked that. He would have liked that more than anything.

It didn’t make sense for the mortal to feel that way about Nick, but sure. He’d gone insane, like with Roz. He’d looked at Roz as if she was marvelous, as though any mortal girl could compare to Sabrina. Roz was the one who’d screwed it up, and Nick wasn’t going to.

Nick hummed satisfaction. “Stay with me, then.”

He kept reading. Occasionally he read an interesting fact, such as one about using mirror shards to lodge a memory into a heart, and he shared it with the mortal.

“Isn’t that interesting?” 

“Sure, nerd,” said the mortal. 

The mortal seemed happy enough to sit around and be told facts, Nick tucked up against the mortal’s chest, able to lean back while the mortal played with his hair. It was a cheering thought: maybe the mortal liked to learn.

“Hey, Nick? You said you were… processing, about hell,” the mortal said, awkward. “You never talk about it. But you could.”

“With you?”

“Or with Sabrina!” the mortal hastened to assure him. “Or with both of us. Whatever you want. You don’t have to.” 

Because of consent? That was nice.

“Lucifer made me see visions,” Nick said, after a pause. “You were in one.”

The mortal made a small distressed sound. “Was I mean?”

“I—no,” said Nick. “You weren’t mean.”

He couldn’t talk about hell anymore. The mortal didn’t ask, but his arms tightened around Nick’s shoulders and he didn’t go to bed. He stayed there, even when his forehead hit Nick’s shoulder as he drowsed off.

Nick kept reading until he hit chapter sixteen, and found the enchantment that would always call a demon to your side.

Softly so he wouldn’t wake the mortal, Nick murmured the spell. To summon the demon, and get the answers, and calm the chaos of hell. So he could stay.

But the spell that could summon a demon from anywhere didn’t work. The library stayed terribly quiet.

There were no answers anywhere.

 _I never meant for anybody to get hurt_ , Nick thought. He hadn’t meant for the mortal to think Sabrina didn’t love him, and be sad. He hadn’t wanted the spell to bring back the mortal’s brother to go wrong. He’d wanted it to go right. He hadn’t wanted to be damned to hell, or to be broken there, or to hurt Sabrina with all his broken edges. He’d thought it would be all right, if she just didn’t find out how broken he was. He’d wanted everything to work out, for all of them.

Nick turned his head so he could hide his face in the mortal’s throat, feeling the soft thunder of his mortal heart and the instant rumble of concern in his chest. 

Theo and Roz already thought Nick was disgusting, greedy, a witch who didn’t care and would only hurt. If they knew what Nick had done—lied to everyone again, tricked them, put the real Nick down to sleep for a hundred years—then those virtuous mortals would know Nick was worse than they’d ever dreamed.

 _I only wanted to be happy too_ , Nick thought. _That was all I wanted._

“You all right, sweetheart?” asked his mortal, drowsy still.

No, Nick wasn’t all right. Nick was awful, terrible. A liar. And the mortal used to know that. But Nick was so grateful he’d forgotten. 

“Never better,” Nick replied. It sounded like a sentence he was passing on himself. He never did seem to get better, after all.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick Scratch is the lie of the party. Wait, I meant life...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to firstaudrina, Julia, kudosonthiswork, Laslus, hekiv, clareifythat, Gracerevealed, insanity_keeps_things_fun, StarryMcClain, knittinginbinary, Abrus, JeanjacketCarf, Stairway_wits, and especially theselfunstable, and I am so sorry to have kept you waiting so long! Sliding in under the wire before I'm totally jossed...

In the future, Nick slept well, and for a long time. He’d dreamed of sleep in hell, even though he couldn’t rest. When he returned from hell, there were still Satan-touched dreams and even after Satan was gone, the dreams were terrible. Somehow it was worse when it was his own mind tormenting him. Worse, because it was so lonely.

He surfaced from sleep in the early morning, confused and scared, nerves jarring his senses into alertness. Expecting the smell of sulfur, or at least the loneliness of his bed in the Academy. 

Instead his senses filtered beautiful, improbable knowledge to him. White hair like lace against silk blurred in his vision, resolving to Sabrina lying on the pillow by his, with her hand curled over Nick’s chest. That reminded him of the way she’d touched his chest when he woke up in her bed, the day after hell, her fingers lingering as though she liked what she saw, knew it was all hers, and wanted to become more familiar with her possession. Before he threw her possession to demon playmates.

But that didn’t matter now. At Nick’s back was the solid protective warmth of the mortal. It was like curling up with the wolves, in a puppy pile that protected against the cold of the snow, but better because Amalia wasn’t there. Like being in a tangled pleased heap of limbs at the Academy, but better because if Nick nuzzled in or did anything else that might be construed as affectionate he wouldn’t be recoiled from. He was welcome. Nick could lean back against the mortal’s broad chest, curl his hand around Sabrina’s small hand, and sigh, and sleep again. 

So he did.

When he woke again, he found his hand empty. He wasn’t too upset, since the mortal’s warmth was still at his back, but he wondered what mission Sabrina had gone on.

He pushed himself upright on their many soft pillows, turned his head and saw in the clear morning light Sabrina sleeping on the other side of the mortal, her head pillowed against his chest. 

There was a lot of space on Nick’s other side. Sabrina must be sleeping on the very edge of the bed, to be with Harvey. Because that was where she wanted to be.

Nick drew his knees up to his chest under the bedclothes, feeling a little odd. 

On a bloodstained winter night last year, when the mines collapsed, Nick heard what the Weird Sisters had done and went in terror to check on the mortal. He’d found Sabrina and Harvey sleeping in a little nest in the back of Harvey’s truck, like two children lost in the woods. In danger, but feeling safe with each other. 

Sabrina’s first love. Her only love, jealousy that was both Satan-touched and his own had whispered to him. It was seeing Sabrina do anything for those she loved that made Nick fall for her. If Nick hadn’t thought that first love was beautiful, hadn’t thought it was meaningful, he wouldn’t have been so jealous or so in love.

They were as sweet now as they had been then, under silk sheets instead of Harvey’s brown jacket. Sabrina’s hair was ivory instead of gold, and she wore red lace instead of her red coat, and the mortal’s face was touched by time, but peaceful instead of pained as it had been once. Nick had liked looking at them together yesterday, and still did now. But… 

Nick hadn’t wanted that first love broken. But he hadn’t wanted to be left out in the cold, either. That nagging fear he would be, fear that twisted in his stomach and wanted to strike like a snake, uncoiled now. He didn’t want to still feel this way, not in the future. It wasn’t an attractive feeling. He knew the swagger was what worked for Sabrina and what the mortal didn’t have, he couldn’t let himself show how he felt. Not until he got miserable, and tossed his feelings in Sabrina’s face. At Dorian’s bar, and in the woods. When he was miserable enough, he thought: If she would always be drawn back to the mortal, she might as well go sooner rather than later.

Nick had thought that he’d left those wretched feelings behind in the past. 

It was fine now, because Sabrina could have them both. It was fixed. It was what Nick had always wanted. His lone wolf of a heart, howling that he was still in the cold with love out of reach, could shut the heaven up.

Nick hid his face down on his knees for a moment. When he looked up, Harvey had stirred. The mortal was frowning with half-awake confusion, and thus his face seemed even dumber than usual. He reached out to Nick, with the arm not around Sabrina, but his reach fell short. Nick had moved away to the other end of the bed without realizing. 

“Hey, love. You okay?”

“Overcome with despair because I was the first one awake,” said Nick, with his best smirk. “I need coffee. Why are you both sleeping in, you never do that.”

“You fell asleep on the sofa, so I carried you upstairs,” said the mortal.

“You did what,” said Nick with flat horror. 

The mortal withdrew the hand reaching for Nick, so he could rub sleep out of his eyes. “I’ve done it before…? Like, I carried you to hell, so after that nothing is much of a stretch…”

“You did what,” said Nick. 

No, he should know this! Nick’s mind was racing. Had he been taken to hell another time? Why would the mortal carry him, back then, when the mortal had always hated him? 

Why was he getting carried at all! He wasn’t meant to be a burden, not to anyone.

Sabrina’s eyelids flickered, and she turned her face into Harvey’s chest, nuzzling against his sleep shirt. “Why are boys loud,” she muttered.

“We were up until early, setting up for the party,” Harvey explained to Nick, in a voice pitched far lower than before, looking down at Sabrina’s head pillowed on his chest with infinite tenderness.

Nick blinked hard. He’d forgotten the party. “Right, there are a whole bunch of goddesses coming to our house!”

“Also Roz,” said the mortal, happily making the situation worse. “And Theo and the Spellmans.”

Nick hoped that included Prudence, and feared it included Lilith. 

Sabrina lifted up her face, expression delighted as it always was when an opportunity came for mischief even though she believed she was such a good girl. “It will be the best party ever! Harvey, Nick, do you think we can go downstairs and see about moving–”

Nick was apprehensive about this party thing. Last party he’d had to hear much talk about uniting with mortals, and Sabrina had tried to jump off the roof and only been stopped by the mortal appealing to her enduring love. Sabrina had said Nick was with her, holding her hand, but he hadn’t been holding her hand. Nick had tried to cozy up to Sabrina’s best friend without knowing that Roz went around letting people be virgin-sacrificed. Just a mess, overall. 

“Oh no,” said the mortal, speaking wisdom for a change. “I’m a hundred per cent done with the decorating, ’Brina!” 

“Harvey, hear me out,” said Sabrina, her face bright and her hands flying about, still lying on him as she tried to convince him. 

Harvey laughed and pulled a sheet over her head and then rolled with her, toward Nick, and Nick had a startled moment when the sheet was flung over his head too. But Sabrina was laughing, the prettiest sound in the world, and the mortal was laughing too, sorrow-dark eyes bright for a change. This was playing, as he had once with the wolves, and Nick smiled and rolled in, tangled up with sheets and limbs, and nipped playfully at the mortal’s jaw. Then he stilled, because being even a touch wolfish was betraying too much, and this was in front of Sabrina and the mortal who were used to mortal things. Softness, not teeth. 

Then the mortal nuzzled him back, not like a wolf at all but a clumsy little gesture of tenderness. Sabrina lunged forward and bit Nick’s neck, not like a wolf but like the sexy bloodthirsty witch she was. And he was between softness and teeth, and laughter and sensuality, as though it didn’t always have to be a dark extreme and he could have both. He put an arm around the mortal’s neck and kissed Sabrina, and in that moment with the light turning the space under the bedsheets into a bright white cave he thought perhaps—but no. It had upset the mortal when he pushed. He wasn’t going to do that anymore.

“Show me the decorations,” he told Sabrina, catching her hand and rolling out of bed. She blinked as though startled to have the sheets snatched off her head, but the next moment was leading him down the stairs and showing him with enthusiasm.

The mortal joined them after a while, having acquired clothing—no, not another flannel shirt, what had Nick done to deserve this, besides be evil—and also Diana.

She gave Nick a squinty suspicious look which was the mortal’s, out of coffee-dark eyes like Nick’s own. Nick experienced this as a betrayal.

“Where is your shirt,” she said. 

Did Future Nick constantly wear shirts? Who was this person? 

“Do you think your dad dresses well?”

“Yes, the best of anybody,” replied Diana.

“That’s why I won’t take fashion tips from you,” said Nick.

Harvey rolled his eyes.

“Don’t get changed on my account,” said Sabrina in her lacy nightgown and robe, snuggling up to Nick with her arms around his bare waist. He grinned and dropped a kiss on the side of her head: the only one in the house with taste. 

Diana’s ballgown had to be changed from pink to blue and back again many times, because of a mortal movie she liked. (The mortal was to blame.) Sabrina did get Nick to move several things and also a WELCOME DIVINE BEINGS banner, eyes agleam with purpose. Nick didn’t have to haul things around like the mortal. He could just point, as could she. There was a bad moment where both of them pointed and Nick got a faceful of ribbons, but then Sabrina burst out laughing and Nick laughed too.

Getting the house ready for a party was a sweet thing, a home thing. Nick liked it. The mortal made them sandwiches. 

“Remember Diana, be on your best behavior,” Sabrina adjured her daughter solemnly. 

Diana nodded. “Say pleased to meet you. Go upstairs after half an hour. Don’t get cursed to sleep for a hundred years.”

The mortal gazed at her with love. “You’re so smart, baby. And you look so pretty in your dress.”

She did. She and Sabrina had settled on wearing different versions of the same diaphanous ice-blue gown, Sabrina’s fitted and showing cleavage which Nick highly approved of. Diana was very dark and Sabrina very fair, and they didn’t look much alike, but the way they scrunched their noses up with pleased mischief was so similar. They got up and twirled together, skirts flaring out like petals opening, and the mortal tilted his head back to admire them and Nick got on the sofa with the mortal to do the same. The mortal put his arm around Nick’s bare shoulders almost absently.

“What do you think, Nick?”

Nick leaned in. “Yeah, I think our girls are pretty.”

“You be pretty too, Daddy,” Diana encouraged him.

“Am I not pretty now,” Harvey teased her.

Nick opened his mouth. Harvey, without looking at him, hit Nick with a sofa cushion. 

“Not a word from you,” said Harvey. “Not one word. God, I hear so much about smooth and charming Nick Scratch, where is he, when is that silver-tongued devil gonna show up, it’s been almost twenty years—”

Nick gestured and a sofa cushion hit Harvey in the back of his messy bedhead.

“That’s what you get for your overbearing witch-hunter ways,” he said primly. “Sabrina! I feel threatened.”

The mortal continued to batter Nick with cushions.

“Excessive violence,” Nick reported, smirking to himself as the mortal laughed, a lovely low sound, his stupid face gone all goofy. “I feel very unsafe.”

Sabrina slid into Nick’s lap, arms around his neck and cute nose pressed to his. “I’ll protect you, darling.”

Nick gave her a thank-you kiss. Diana went and stood at Harvey’s knee, patting it with her small hand.

“I think you would be more pretty if you wore a bow tie.”

“Feeling very oppressed by witches, as usual,” said the mortal, and gave Diana a kiss and got up. “Maybe a shirt before the party, Nick.”

Nick raised his eyebrows. “I thought we were supposed to be showing these goddesses a good time.” 

The mortal scoffed and left. There was a little pinscratch line between Sabrina’s brows, and Nick remembered her talking about how much he flirted. It had been so difficult to understand the way Sabrina thought of love, and now things were different again. 

So he said the one truth he knew: “I love you, Spellman,” and tucked his head down onto her shoulder. She touched his hair with lingering fingers. She never seemed to want to get these little touches over with and move to the main event, which was sometimes frustrating but always so sweet. He turned his face in and kissed her, reverent and light. She was the only girl he’d ever kissed on the lips without tongue.

“For real, though, and I regret to say it, but you should probably put on a shirt,” said Sabrina, once the kiss was done. He could feel her smiling against his mouth.

“As always… as you wish,” he told her, and went up to their room where the mortal was buttoning a formal shirt, his bowtie in two black strips on either side of his open collar.

One of each, being cute upstairs and downstairs in his house. Why did people ever do monogamy? Nick gestured to himself lazily, and was wearing a well-tailored tuxedo with his hair done. Then he whistled.

The mortal slanted a look over his shoulder, definitely pleased to see Nick, so Nick smiled. “Thank God you’re here,” said the mortal, talking filth in a house with a child in it. “This is so much worse than normal ties. It took me an hour to tie this in London for the gallery opening.”

Ha, what a goof, he was bad at everything. Nick came over and tied the mortal’s tie for him, liking this moment, standing in front of the wide light-filled windows of home, when the mortal’s little frustrated look smoothed out back to happiness. Nick fixed the mortal’s hair for him, too, though it was difficult like the rest of him: soft, nice to touch, but deceptively unruly. 

“Wearing normal ties to formal events is bad manners,” instructed Nick. “It deprives other people of visuals.”

Harvey rolled his eyes. “So you always say, which is why I own bow ties in the first place.”

“I remember you wearing normal ties to formal events and I was horrified!”

“We can’t all look like movie stars at the sweethearts dance,” grumbled the mortal.

Nick was thrilled. “You thought I looked like a movie star at the sweethearts dance?”

The mortal shrugged.

“Did you have a crush on me?” Nick demanded, suffused with delight. “Did you have a big, embarrassing crush! It’s okay if you did, I won’t tease you much at all.”

“I don’t know, Nicholas, that does not seem true,” said Harvey. “I didn’t have a crush on you at all. I was sixteen and awkward, the only crush was the crushing blow you delivered to my self-esteem by getting with the girl I’d loved most of my life.” 

It was odd to think that the mortal had been jealous as well. It made sense, of course, because Nick was cuter and smarter and could do magic and the mortal wasn’t any competition, and yet… Sabrina had loved him, and Nick could see why, and that made everything else not matter. 

Nick must have looked embarrassingly crestfallen, since that soft touch of a mortal cupped Nick’s face in his hands, leaned down and kissed him.

“The crush came later,” he murmured. 

Nick scoffed against the mortal’s mouth. Later, after Roz had done whatever she’d done and broken the mortal’s mind so he thought he loved Nick. Someone should tell Harvey that crushes traditionally came after love, not before, but he’d never done things the right way around. 

Since the delusions benefited Nick, he wouldn’t be the one. It was nice, thinking of this mortal having a crush on him sometime. Coming by the Academy to see him, looking at the ground all shy, lighting up when he got a look at him, the way he had when he saw Sabrina or Roz. He’d said Roz was coming to the party tonight: Roz could not have him back. 

“My little mortal love now,” Nick murmured, tipping his head back for the next kiss and tugging the mortal closer by his tie. Harvey dipped his head down and kissed Nick, warm with only the thin layer of his shirt between his skin and Nick’s hands, and Nick could always untie the bowtie again…

“Ahem!” said Diana from the door, and Harvey turned away, stepping out of reach.

“Yeah, sweetheart, what is it?”

“I need to talk to Nick,” said Diana imperiously. “Not you, Daddy. Only Nick.”

Harvey tilted an eyebrow at Nick, amused and pleased. He liked to see his people loving each other, the mortal did: always went soft-eyed when he saw Roz and Sabrina together, even though it was clear Roz loved Sabrina more than she loved the mortal. (As she should! But still, it seemed hard lines on the mortal.)

Nick, not pleased at all, trailed gloomily behind Diana. He knew that walk, and the stormy look in that eye, though he knew it from Sabrina. She’d slapped Agatha and called Nick a narcissist and a liar wearing that look.

Diana stood like a queen in the middle of her bedroom, a fancifully painted toy castle behind her. “Why are you always all up on Daddy’s business, Past Nick?”

Nick frowned. “All up in his business?”

Diana dismissed this with a wave of her hand, but words were important, Nick felt. 

“Real Nick doesn’t do it!”

There it was again. What was Future Nick’s problem, exactly? Nick frowned. “I’m real.”

“I want you to stop,” said Diana.

“Why? He doesn’t seem to mind.”

Diana’s chin wobbled. “He likes it. I d—don’t want him to like you more than the real Nick.”

“If that’s a possibility…” Nick hesitated. “What if I—I could—”

Diana’s toy castle crumbled into ruin, and her dolls tumbled off the shelves. “You’re not staying!” she snapped. “I want the real Nick back! He’s my dad too. He loves me! You don’t love me.”

Nick didn’t. He didn’t know her that well, and he didn’t feel ready to be a father. But she was—she felt important to him. He thought he could love her, soon. 

Except he knew her stubborn look, Sabrina’s stubborn look. If she decided he was an enemy, she wouldn’t relent.

“I wasn’t going to suggest staying,” he lied. “I was going to say, I could tone it down, if you want. But it doesn’t seem a bad thing for your father to be happy.”

He felt bad, using her love for the mortal against her. He did it anyway and she crumpled, like her mother, wanting the best for that mortal. She pouted and scuffed her shiny shoes against her bedroom carpet.

“Keep a careful watch out at the party,” Nick added, to distract her. “Help me gather information for my mission. And when it’s accomplished, I’ll leave.”

Diana hesitated, and nodded.

He felt his heart light in his chest as he stepped over the threshold. He knew he should be more worried about Diana, but she thought the mortal liked him best. He could get good enough at pretending, so that Diana would think it was the future version. He’d always been magic at pretending. They could all be happy. They could be. Surely happiness was possible.

His light heart seemed to shake, as though wavering in flight. Nick wanted to see Sabrina. He could usually find certainty with her. He checked himself in the cheval glass on the landing. He was dashing, the way she liked him. He turned toward the stairs.

Sabrina was already charging up the steps toward him, her face bright. “Nick, they’re coming!”

It was time.

Nick made a small gesture, and the music started, and the doors of their home shivered, preparing for invasion. Nick felt as though he could see this home through the guests’ eyes. A place with the cozy witch touches of the Spellman house, bright with big windows and stained glass for the mortal’s artist eyes, books on shelves tucked away like the library at the Academy. Their place. Even if the guests were goddesses, they couldn’t fault it.

He’d never had a home before. A home had never seemed possible, until Sabrina. Then it was impossible again.

Their house was draped with glittering raiment, mortal pictures in magic frames, old books beside new icons, and in through their doors of stained glass and oak came the goddesses. 

Most Nick knew by sight, from illustrations or visions or very exclusive gatherings. Hecate with her flaming torches and her two familiars, with Zelda Spellman on her arm, Zelda giggling in an uncharacteristic schoolgirl fashion that Nick suspected Lilith wasn’t enjoying. Persephone with a tarnished crown and a garland of old, old flowers, her lips the color of pomegranates. Close to Persephone always, her mother Demeter strode with her grim aspect and her horn of plenty. Marie Laveau with her namesake Marie LeFleur, their jewelry clinking with a faint sound of bones behind the musical noise. Merga Bien with her ghost child, burned at the stake before birth, and Mother Shipton with her content wrinkled apple of a face and dark knowledge in her eyes. Mawu and Nyx, the light and dark side of the moon, holding hands. 

Sabrina glanced at Nick and gave a little sideways cute smile at the sight of him, then hopped up the step so they were standing together to receive the guests.

“Shall we?” she whispered in his ear.

Nick made a sweeping gesture, like a conjurer displaying a trick.

“Ladies,” he told the goddesses. “Welcome.”

Sabrina dipped a curtsy, the way she had when she’d come down the stairs, the night he’d taken her to the sweethearts’ dance and she’d worn red. (And the mortal had thought he looked like a movie star!)

“Is this Nicholas? Very pretty,” said Mother Shipton in a cracked voice, and Nick winked at her. “Sabrina, gel, where is the snacks table?” 

“Let me show you,” said Sabrina smoothly. 

“Ah, you have a mortal to look after your child,” Demeter observed. “A fine idea. Children need careful watching.”

“This is my mortal husband,” said Sabrina, gesturing behind her. “And my daughter.”

Nick glanced around too. The mortal was hanging back at the top of the stairs, almost hidden from sight, holding hands with Diana. 

“Come here, pretty child,” said Demeter admiringly. “She reminds me of when my daughter was young, and wholly mine.”

“Eight thousand years ago,” Persephone remarked under her breath. 

“It feels like yesterday!” said Demeter. “Come and bring your mortal nursemaid.”

Nick looked Sabrina’s way, but she was already leading Mother Shipton to the refreshments, talking about agreements and treaties and grand plans. Harvey was leading Diana down to the goddess Demeter, head ducked.

“He’s not…” said Nick. “He’s my betrothed.”

“You always did like one of each,” drawled a voice that made Nick’s skin crawl with terrible familiarity. 

The demon playmate De Sade stepped out from the shadow of the goddess Nyx, who glanced at him with mild surprise as though she’d forgotten he was there. All around were goddesses laughing and chatting and beginning to dance.

“Oh, I brought him just in case it was a boring party,” Nyx explained. 

De Sade laughed as if at a masterstroke of wit. He was always laughing, Nick recalled with great clarity. He and Salo were both always laughing, wild sounds that had nothing to do with happiness, which echoed off the dungeon walls. 

“Oh, hi,” said the mortal to Nick’s absolute horror, offering De Sade his hand. “Are you a friend of Nick’s?”

De Sade took Harvey’s hand, and didn’t let go. He smiled, all teeth. “Absolutely. When was the last time I saw him, now—”

“Years,” Nick said between his teeth.

It seemed hallucinatory that he was here. De Sade, the male playmate Nick had sported with. Years ago, for everyone else. Weeks ago, for Nick. If it hadn’t been for potions and unguents, Nick would still bear the marks of De Sade’s whip on his bare shoulders. He could still remember the feeling of De Sade’s pointed tongue tracing up his abs and licking the sweat off his chest. 

The demon’s smile spread, amused. “Feels like just yesterday.” His eyes slid to Harvey. “I go by the moniker De Sade.”

“I’m called Harvey,” said the mortal, then smiled affectionately Nick’s way. “Not by Nick. But by everyone else…”

“Oh, _Harvey_!” said De Sade. “You’re Harvey! Oh, I see.” 

The mortal frowned. “What do you see…”

De Sade was still holding onto his hand. “What’s your pleasure?”

“Oh, like, hobbies?” Harvey asked. “Dungeons and Dragons, I guess…”

No! Nick’s mind screamed. 

De Sade’s smile spread farther. “What a coincidence. Me too.” 

“Cool,” said Harvey.

Now Harvey was making friends with a sex demon. Nick felt as if he was having an out-of-body experience. Harvey tried to pull his hand back gently, but the sex demon hung onto it.

“You’re very cute,” said De Sade. “I see why—”

“Shut up,” said Nick, but Harvey wasn’t listening anyway, because he’d finally twigged that he was being hit on and had turned to Nick in total alarm. “Nick…”

“Go,” said Nick. “Take Diana.” 

The mortal picked up Diana and basically fled, and only after he was gone did Nick realize that what he’d done must have seemed like giving orders to the subservient mortal. The nursemaid. 

“Handy to have around the house, I’m sure,” murmured Demeter.

Sabrina had plans for her committee of goddesses, Nick was sure. World-changing plans, if he knew his girl. He smiled around with empty charm. 

“If you’ll excuse me…” he said, and went around the crowd introducing himself and flattering goddesses. 

Faking it, which was what he was best at. Sabrina exchanged smiles with him over a goddess’s head. She was so trusting, she always believed the faking. 

It wasn’t that he’d wanted to betray her. He hadn’t gone to the demons because he wanted to. He’d gone there because… because of Satan, but not only because of Satan. Because one of each was what he liked, and he knew she’d think he was disgusting. Because pain was the only truth he knew, and he was desperate to feel anything other than what he felt already. Because he could never have what he wanted, and be clean. 

He saw a glittering figure in the drawing room, and turned around with more charm on his lips, when the charm dissolved away.

“Hey, Nick,” said Roz. “Have you seen Harvey?”

She was looking beautiful in gold, hair piled on top of her head.

Nick bristled. “Why do you want him?”

She couldn’t have him. Clearly as Roz had made the terrible decision to have a child with Caliban, her baby needed a father, and Nick understood why the mortal might seem an ideal candidate, but the mortal was booked. She wasn’t allowed to let people be sacrificed, and then keep them when she wouldn’t even sleep with them.

It occurred to Nick that he actually wasn’t sure if Harvey had slept with his Rosalind. Probably he had, he thought, remembering the way they acted together after the pagans were destroyed. Though Roz hadn’t done it to save him, she might have done it for herself. She wanted the mortal, even if she didn’t love him, that much had always been clear. And the mortal would have leaped for it, believing it was love.

Nick didn’t understand why it made him feel like choking, to picture her with the mortal. Her hands against his broad bare shoulders, brushing away the hair that always fell into his eyes, him kissing the curve of her neck with that concentrated, worshipful tenderness, as though love was his only god. It was worse than picturing Sabrina with Caliban, since Sabrina could desire without love, and Nick was pretty sure the mortal couldn’t. 

“I just wanted to say hi,” said Roz. “I could only get the sitter for an hour, so I can’t stay.”

“I would have thought dozens of demons would be lining up to babysit Caliban’s little prince.”

Roz’s beautiful, mulberry-painted mouth twisted. “He and his demons are not involved. Look, I know you think I’m an idiot for having an affair with Caliban—maybe you’re right—”

“I’m right!” declared Nick. 

“I just thought…” said Roz. “I thought he liked Sabrina for her power, but he really liked me for me. He said I deserved to be kissed from stone to flesh, and I wanted to believe him. I wanted to be the star of a great love story for a change.” She glared at him. “Harvey understands me. He thought he was the star of a great love story until you came along, and since then he’s been trying desperately to fit himself into different love stories. We both know that. At least I do love him, even if it wasn’t right.”

Nick remembered that Roz had apparently broken the mortal’s heart, somehow. He didn’t know how. Surely by ditching him, since the mortal would have forgiven her anything. He could never hate any of them, not Sabrina or Roz or Theo, no matter what they did. 

And Roz and Theo knew that Nick had scooped up Harvey as a mortal toy to amuse himself and Sabrina with, knew that Nick couldn’t love a mortal. They probably wanted the mortal to leave.

“You didn’t love him,” said Nick, and made sure it stung. “You knew the pagans were out for blood, and you knew you were safe, and you knew he wasn’t.”

Roz bit her lip. “We were—we were kids back then.”

“Yes, he could have died a kid,” said Nick, remembering the sheer terror of that day. 

He’d been drunk, watching Dorian’s bar for him—not long after a somewhat sordid encounter with Dorian and a fight with Sabrina, trying not to think about the oblivion promised by more alcohol, or demonic drugs, or playmates. If Nick went to the playmates with his blood cleansed of Lucifer, then there was no excuse. That was who he was.

Then the mortals had accidentally summoned him instead of Sabrina because the pagans were after Harvey. Sabrina was in hell, and the mortals were fragile and precious and imperiled and alone. There was nobody but Nick to help them, and they hadn’t even meant to ask. It seemed as though they expected Nick to leave. 

He remembered the mortal’s wide, scared dark eyes, how of course it had been his idiot idea to fight the pagans in the first place. Nick would have died rather than leave. 

“I had a Cunning vision of him and Sabrina kissing,” said Roz. “Desperately. When she had her white hair. A day before he asked me out. I couldn’t sleep with him then, with that vision hanging in front of my eyes.”

The way she spoke, it still hurt, but Nick didn’t think it was her heart that was hurt. 

“I understand. You put your pride before his life.”

“ _Nick_ ,” said Harvey’s voice behind them, and Nick turned in dread: the mortal didn’t like it when witches were vicious. The mortal was standing at the door, hair tumbled back into his furious eyes. “I would much rather have died, than have Roz do anything she didn’t want to do or that she was uncomfortable with. Roz knew that.” 

He addressed Roz tenderly, as usual, while he was angry with Nick. As usual again.

“And Roz risked her life fighting for me. Because she loved me,” the mortal went on. “You risked your life fighting for me, too. Uh, obviously not because you loved me back then—”

“Haha, obviously,” sneered Nick, an edge of panic in his laugh.

Roz’s expression said, You don’t love him now, but she didn’t say it out loud. Good. No more breaking the mortal’s heart, Roz!

“Because you’re a good person,” said Harvey, turning his tender look on Nick after all. “Because you always try to do the right thing.”

Wow, delusions of love were blind. But it was all right, Harvey’s delusions of love hadn’t shifted focus back to Rosalind. 

“It was a long time ago,” Harvey continued. “And you both have to see who the other person actually is now. You know you’d like each other, if you did. I’m--I’m sorry he talked to you like that, Roz—he’s going through something, and Caliban said some shit that upset him—”

Roz’s face changed. Her eyes went to Nick, too eager. “You talked to Caliban?”

“Your lover boy?” asked Nick. “Did you love him?”

Lord, what fools these mortals be.

“At least I don’t lie about loving someone,” snapped Roz, and Nick was speechless, having the truth flung in his face, in front of the mortal. Surely it must be obvious, even to the mortal, that Roz was right.

“ _Roz_!” snapped out the mortal, in the same furious voice he’d used addressing Nick, then gentled his tone with a visible effort. “I know you’re just looking out for me. But there’s no need. None at all. Come with me to see Diana for a moment.” 

He guided Roz out of the door. He touched Nick’s arm on the way out, a married-person sort of touch, but Nick wasn’t Future Nick and he didn’t know what that was supposed to mean. Go back to the party? I’ll come back soon? Roz has made me have a terrible revelation about your cold cruel witch’s heart?

Nick would go to see Sabrina, that was what he’d do. She was refuge. He turned toward the folding doors of the drawing room, then jolted.

He saw the goddess Persephone with her pomegranate-stained lips, barring the doors. 

“If this is a sexual proposition…” said Nick. “I’m very flattered and you’re very lovely, but I need my wife’s and my fiance’s permission and they are not reasonable people. Alas for our doomed love, please excuse me…”

“You’re hilarious,” said Persephone, rolling her eyes, where the whites had a black overlay as though they were always in shadow. “What word is there of Sabnock?”

The demon who was Future Nick’s informant. What did Persephone, one of Sabrina’s goddesses, know about him? What had Future Nick done? What the heaven was going on?

“I… tried to summon Sabnock last night and couldn’t reach him,” Nick answered slowly. 

“Do you think Caliban had him killed?” asked Persephone. “Perhaps we should approach him about our deal sooner rather than later.”

Nick blinked. “Our deal. Well… if Sabrina…”

“Don’t worry, I cast a spell of silence before I came in,” Persephone assured him. “She won’t hear. You’ll have her, ignorant and all to yourself, just the way you want.”

Oh, that bastard, Nick thought of his future self. Oh, what had he done?

“We’ll all have what we want?” he said, trying to lead her on to speak further. “That’s the deal.”

“But of course. _My_ informants haven’t dropped out of reach,” Persephone told him with a touch of arrogance. “Caliban will take the deal. He talks a good game about ruling by Sabrina Morningstar’s side, but all reports say he’s pining. It’s very clear he wants his heir back, and the mortal woman too. I’ll have the throne of hell, and make Caliban my heir, and the succession will be assured. And you will have Sabrina the Morningstar, and that witch-hunting mortal trash will be dead in the ground.”

She smiled, lips curling richly, as though she fully expected Nick to smile back.

Nick’s throat was dry. “Have we ever actually talked about our motives, Persephone?”

The goddess frowned. “Not really, I suppose. We’re conspirators. We don’t chit-chat. Besides, it’s fairly simple, isn’t it? I’ve never possessed the throne just for myself, with no glum infernal husband to dictate to me. And you’ve never possessed Sabrina, just for yourself.” 

No. He never had.

Nick remembered waking up to see them together this morning, remembered hearing You’re always there to catch me, realizing the mandrake must have run to Harvey first thing and never to Nick at all. Remembered being in the woods, screaming at Sabrina with fury that wasn’t all Satan that deep, deep down they both knew… 

I never, never would, thought Nick, but why wouldn’t he?

What if he’d had years of that, of the Sabrina and Harvey are destined business, of coming second place in her glorious heart to some idiot, short-lived mortal. What did it matter if the mortal sang a little song that Nick longed to hear more of, or believed he loved Nick now?

Nick wasn’t kind or patient, and he couldn’t love anything but Sabrina.

“I know how it is, with jealousy,” said the goddess, shaking her somber locks. “My mother…”

 _Jealousy is a wolf that eats happiness._ Nick knew that much. And he was Amalia’s boy, after all. Take what’s standing between you and what you want, and tear it to bloody shreds.

“I didn’t,” Nick began hopelessly. “I’m not…”

But he knew what he was. The scum who’d broken Sabrina’s heart deceiving her, then cavorting with playmates. Why not hurt her again, to possess her entirely? Because in the end, Nick was so selfish. 

Persephone crossed the gleaming floor and came to stand by the mantel with him. There were family pictures on the mantel, a baby picture of Diana with the mortal holding her, looking as if he was about to cry with happiness. And Sabrina and Nick on either side, but was that pictured Nick’s subtle, trickster smile real? Had he ever been real, even for a minute, in his whole life?

She patted Nick’s hand, her fingers grave-cold. “I know you are doing it for Sabrina’s sake, too. We’ve all heard that the mortal accessed some of those witch-hunting, tainted celestial powers. Nothing is more unforgiving than the powers of heaven. Are you sure Sabrina is safe with him? Or the child?”

 _Yes, I am sure, he loves them_ , Nick wanted to snap back. But he remembered Prudence’s warnings. He knew the stories as well, of flaming torches that came with the chant: _Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live_. He’d seen the gold of burning fires in his mortal’s eyes.

For Nick himself, it didn’t matter. He liked the danger. But for Sabrina and Diana, who loved and trusted the mortal so utterly and who were so precious… 

Nick’s heart was a wild thing on a leash, trying to escape. But there was no escape, even in the future. Because he couldn’t escape himself, and all the wrongs he did.

A knock sounded on the door.

“Whoever’s having sex in there, would you like company?”

“Keep trying to contact Sabnock,” Persephone whispered in Nick’s ear. “I’ll be in touch with Caliban, and let you know what he says.”

Nick could only nod, helplessly, as the goddess swanned out. Nyx and Mawu, the goddesses of the moon, wandered in with their playmate De Sade. De Sade caught Nick’s eye and ran an appreciative hand down Nick’s chest, claws catching at his shirt buttons.

Maybe Future Nick was sleeping with him. Maybe he’d seen him yesterday, after all. What wouldn’t he do, what depths of depravity wouldn’t he stoop to? He felt like he had breaking up with Sabrina in his bedroom, felt so vile he couldn’t let her touch him, and yet he couldn’t stop being vile. 

He wandered out into the milling crowd, offering goddesses smiles and drinks, a hollow thing with a shiny surface. 

Then he blinked, and found himself offering Hilda and Dr Cerberus champagne. He almost recoiled. Hilda had always been like the mortal, able to see through him. She’d never liked him at all.

Hilda patted his cheek. “Nick, love, you look very handsome.”

“Thank you,” Nick said automatically. “And you’re a vision! When can I steal you from your incubus lover?”

“Now now,” said Dr Cerberus, who had acquired seven sandwiches and seemed gently pleased with the world. “Where’s my little Di?”

“With the mortal,” said Nick. “After all, we use him as a nursemaid and keep him tucked away upstairs as a combination dirty little secret and servant.”

No wonder his mortal friends knew and they were desperate to get the mortal away. Because Nick had used him, and now he was proving inconvenient, so Nick was getting rid of him. 

“Ah, sweet Nick, my poppet, it’s not like Harvey wants to host a big party,” said Hilda. “There’s that little mortal thing called social anxiety you keep forgetting about. You’re a love to be concerned for him, but it’s fine since we all know the truth, isn’t it?” 

She beamed at him, and Nick’s heart sank further. Nobody would save the mortal. Sabrina’s Aunt Hilda loved him now, as well as the mortal. This was his ideal future, in which Nick had everybody fooled. 

“I only know that I have to dance with you,” Nick told her, and swept her into a dip while she giggled and called him a silly boy. 

He went on to dance with several goddesses. At one point in the fevered, glittering night, he glanced up the staircase and saw Sabrina and Harvey standing there, holding hands fast in the way they did.

Both of them were watching, pleased, and Nick looked around to see whether one of their friends was there, but they weren’t. He would have realized if it had been Sabrina alone, he knew that look on her face, but he hadn’t seen it on the mortal’s before: pride of possession. _Hey, that’s my man._

The look was for him. Nick preened inwardly, a smile starting on his lips, then remembered the murder scheme he’d hatched with goddesses and infernal princes.

Back to the party. That he could do, just like he’d done with the Judas Boys, and why did people condemn lying when there was no other way to survive?

Nick felt panic as the party started to die down. He wanted it to keep going, so he could keep smiling and talking and not think. 

Someone slid a strong arm around his waist, and Nick was turning vaguely startled to see if the owner of said arm was hot—felt like he was—when the mortal’s voice in his ear said: “Enjoying the party, sweetheart?” 

Ah, Harvey being clingy as usual.

Nick turned so he could lean in, dipping his face down into his space, between Harvey’s collar and his throat.

“It’s okay,” he murmured. “You?”

“Oh, you know me,” said his mortal, with easy assurance that Nick did. “More your and Sabrina’s scene. But Theo was here for a bit!” His voice sounded like he was beaming at just the thought of his friend, then like he was frowning. “And a voodoo priest hit on me. And that demon friend of yours.”

Nick was personally fine with being hit on. Who could blame people for trying? The answer was that the mortal could. Nobody was allowed touch him, except Nick and Sabrina. Nick, because he was allowed, slipped his arms under Harvey’s jacket and around Harvey’s waist and leaned against him. The mortal took Nick’s full weight easily, as though he really could carry him. Nick curled into him desperately.

“Harvey, I love you,” he lied, into the curve of his neck. He didn’t understand why this one lie was so difficult to say, when all the others came so easy.

The mortal’s warm fingers slid through Nick’s hair, warm voice sounding faintly alarmed. “Oh no, what’s wrong?”

“That demon’s not my friend,” Nick mumbled. “He’s one of the demons when… when Sabrina and I broke up…”

“Oh,” said the mortal, softly. 

When Sabrina had seen him in that dungeon, collared and chained by cackling heartless creatures by his own will, he’d known he could never be the star of her romantic fantasies ever again. And at least she was Zelda Spellman’s niece. How much worse for the mortal to know, when he was scandalized by everything about witches already? The mortal had already seen Nick laid low in hell. How much lower did Nick have to be in his eyes?

“It wasn’t…” said Nick. “I didn’t go there for kicks. I never knew how to be better. I wanted to be, but I never could see how.”

“I love you,” said the mortal, his voice steady, wrapping his arms around Nick without hesitation. “I think you’re great.”

Yes, but the problem was, the mortal was deluded and wrong. 

“Ever since I first saw you both…” began Nick. 

“Right, when you decided to prowl around the mortal world like a creepy stalker and saw Sabrina from afar off and decided you had to have her?”

He’d wandered the world, across mountains with the wolves, in the Unholy Land because he had nowhere else to go for the holidays. And then it was so simple, a girl with fireworks in the sky turning her hair white and scarlet. A boy talking to him about love.

“Yeah,” said Nick. “Ever since that evening in summer, all I wanted was to be with you.”

His odd little love, unique in Nick’s experience. Little darling, who liked hugs and explosives and terrible decisions and taking care of people. Ready to be tender and ready to burn down the world.

“I still do.”

That hadn’t changed, even through the fires of hell. Sabrina’s hands on the day Amalia died, cool on his face, her eyes so dark and so clear making him feel really seen for the first time. Harvey’s words, which he thought he wasn’t good with, love shining in the darkest place. He’d said once, _if we keep loving each other as much as we can, if we keep trying as hard as we can..._ The words weren’t even meant for Nick, but they kept him going.

“Your words are meant for me now,” Nick said, clinging to the mortal’s shirt beneath his jacket. “Aren’t they?”

“I was meant for you,” his mortal murmured back. All sweet, and romantic. What an idiot.

There was no power, infernal, celestial, or earthly, that could have intended a creature sent to this world by angels for someone like Nick. But he meant it, the adorable heavensent fool. That was miracle enough.

But even a miracle hadn’t been enough for Nick in the future. Had it? He was a witch, starving and vicious about it. He always wanted more.

Nick kissed his throat, just above the shirt collar. 

_Oh, my mortal, my sweet little mortal love, you let the wrong witch in out of the cold, trusted the wrong monster with your heart. I am so sorry._

He laid more kisses along the line of his throat, feeling the mortal’s breathing go uneven.

“Do you never want to have sex without Sabrina?” Nick asked, wistful. Surely, since they were getting married, someday they could. Oh for hell’s sake, did the mortal want to wait for marriage? 

Nick gave serious thought to getting married tomorrow.

“Okay, ‘never’ is a little dramatic, considering we had sex without her five days ago,” Harvey said, his tone mild. 

Did we, Nick thought. He should’ve been delighted. This was amazing news that would surely mean far more sex with far less scheduling. Only—they hadn’t. The mortal had slept with that other Nick, who was able to do everything Nick couldn’t. He was the one the mortal loved, for no reason Nick understood. The other Nick, for whom all this hadn’t been enough, who was waiting like a wolf in the dark to bring the mortal down. Nick hated him.

Nick kissed the mortal instead of asking what he wanted to ask, turning all his desperate questions into kisses. Was it day, was it night, what did we do, how do you like to be touched, what did you say, will you say it again?

“My husbands necking instead of socializing, I see,” said Sabrina, the only intrusion who would have been welcome at this time. Harvey smiled just to hear her. Nick kissed his smile, then bent his head to kiss hers. 

“How are your schemes going, Spellman?” 

Sabrina smiled saucily. “Pretty good. How many times did you get hit on, Scratch?”

“So many! Am I allowed to have meaningless one-night stands with demons?” asked Nick.

He meant it as a joke, but of course he shouldn’t be making jokes like that, about things they took seriously. 

“We can discuss that…” Sabrina sounded doubtful.

“Sure you can,” said the mortal. “If you feel like getting witch-hunted.”

“Wow!” said Nick. “Did you hear that, Sabrina? That was a threat!” He cuddled in against the mortal, in the circle of his arm, and lied: “Once again, I feel unsafe.”

 _Nothing is more unforgiving than the powers of heaven,_ the goddess Persephone had told him.

 _He’ll die, but maybe he’ll kill her first,_ a hallucination of Prudence had hissed at Nick in hell, piling nightmare on top of nightmare. 

_No,_ Nick had said then, and thought now. No, no, no. 

Nick wasn’t going to do it! He was here now, and he wouldn’t let the mortal die, and he wouldn’t become Nick of the future who didn’t appreciate what he had. He smiled with sudden intense relief, and the goddess Merga Bien, wandering by with her ghost child and Diana chattering to the ghost child, stopped as though hitting a glass window. She smiled at him, charmed, and Nick smiled back, his arm around Harvey and sliding his other arm around Sabrina, securely taken. 

The party broke up. Goddesses had places to be. Harvey took Diana to bed, complaining she wasn’t tired though it was two in the morning, while Sabrina and Nick bid their guests goodbye at the door. 

The music was still playing, so Nick whirled Sabrina around the kitchen, and watched her laugh, then heard the sound of a low sweet voice. The mortal leaned against the doorframe, singing for them, sleeves rolled up and hair gone terrible again. Nick knew Diana must be safely tucked up in her bed.

Nick picked Sabrina up off her feet, her arms going tight around his neck and her laugh delighted in his ear, dipped her so her white head touched the marble and spun her across the kitchen floor. Then he spun her back in, leaning against his chest, and held out his free hand to the mortal.

“Oh no,” said the mortal. “Stop it, stop being cool at once, you’ve been doing it all night.”

He came over anyway, putting his arm around Nick’s shoulders and dipping his face down for an instant into the curve of Nick’s neck, then leaning over Nick’s shoulder to kiss Sabrina. And Nick was between them, and it wasn’t safe, but it felt so safe.

“Being cool just comes naturally,” Nick claimed.

Sabrina laughed. “You always did think you were so smooth.”

“Be that with all of them,” said Harvey. “You don’t have to be cool with us.”

And he kept singing, moving with them as Nick and Sabrina slow danced, one of Nick’s hands clasped in Sabrina’s and the other reaching back, threaded in Harvey’s hair. 

Until Harvey messed up Nick’s hair, leaving a kiss behind in the rumpled curls so Nick didn’t fix it, touched Sabrina’s cheek and said, “My taxi’s at the door.”

“What!” exclaimed Nick.

“I have to go back to the exhibition, remember?” said Harvey, talking lunacy as usual. “Catching the redeye? I have to go now.”

“I can teleport you!”

Harvey rolled his eyes. “Yes, people never notice when there’s no record of how someone entered a country.” 

“Sabrina, is this allowed!” 

“If you love something, let it go on a plane,” said Sabrina.

Apparently this was allowed. Harvey kissed them both, once more, and went. Nick’s music faded away with the closing of the door behind the mortal. Nick hadn’t planned it that way. 

They were left, Nick and Sabrina together, in the silvery moonlight-on-marble of their kitchen. 

“You were great tonight,” Sabrina told him. “I love you.”

Nick hesitated, but he had to know whatever Future Nick had done to accomplish the miracle, so he could replicate it perfectly.

“Yes…” he said. “When did that happen?”

Sabrina wrinkled her pretty nose. “What do you mean? I loved you almost right away--”

“When were you… sure of me,” said Nick.

Maybe she still wasn’t. He couldn’t blame her. 

“Oh,” said Sabrina, and hopped up on their kitchen counter, blue skirts spread about her on the marble, with an expression of concentration. “There were a lot of times I loved you,” she told Nick, squeezing his hand, and he smiled on reflex. “But—sure of you. I was so hurt when we broke up, I thought—I’d tried to do everything right this time, I was prepared to do anything, and you ended up suffering worse than Harvey and I blamed myself. But I also couldn’t help thinking, did you love me because you felt guilty about Satan, or because you wanted someone to love? There was so much pretending, about Lucifer’s orders or sex demons…” 

Nick flinched under the barrage of her words, but she held tight onto his hand. She didn’t know that there was more pretending now, that Nick was pretending to be Future Nick, that Future Nick had been plotting to rob her of joy and destroy her mortal love.

Sabrina shook her head and told him earnestly, “No, no, love, but I couldn’t help but wondering what was real. I thought maybe none of it was. Then I was going to hell to beat Caliban in that competition, and I saw you in Dorian’s bar, and you said the Sabrina Spellman you knew would go to her family.”

He’d been waiting to hear about Future Nick, impossibly getting everything he’d ever wanted. He hadn’t expected to hear about himself. He’d done that. He’d done that.

He heard a faint buzzing in his ears. “Wait, what?”

He’d been drunk and despairing at the time, and said what he’d said because… she hated him anyway. It didn’t matter anyway. She’d seen him with the demon playmates, and she’d never look at him the way she used to. Not ever again.

Only she was, her eyes softly shining. “You said something I didn’t want to hear, and you were right. About what I should do, and who I was. Harvey would tell me the truth like that, and it was how I knew he loved me. And then you did it, too. You saw the true me, and you told the truth. Like when you were influenced by Lucifer, and I knew it wasn’t really you, not entirely you. We can both see who we truly are, and that helps us be who we truly are. I believe that.” Sabrina paused. “Mostly I wish to be supported,” she stipulated. “But I want to know you mean it, when you do.”

Nick risked another look up at her. The soft shine of her gaze on him hadn’t gone away. “I mean it,” he said hoarsely.

She smiled at him, so brilliantly, though her eyes were full of tears. “After the pagans, I thought I could live—something closer to a mortal life. Because Lilith and Lucifer tricked me into signing the Book, I could always say I was deceived and I could long to go back to mortality and normalcy, while I was in the Academy or hell. But mortal wasn’t ever all I was. And—and I would be in Baxter High, and I’d see Roz and Harvey together and I would be miserable because—I missed him, and I wanted to be in her place, the way I always used to be. But that wasn’t all. I dreamed of you, after we first met, so cool in your letterman jacket in Baxter High. The dream king of the school, who wanted me. The dreams didn’t stop, when I was in hell or Baxter High.”

If that was true, if she’d truly wanted him back the way he was and despite all he’d done, then for the first time it seemed possible to go back. He could wear a letterman jacket or whatever she wanted, and he’d get there before the mortal and Roz fell apart. He could be with Sabrina, the one thing he’d wanted most. And the mortal would be safe. Even if he and Roz fell apart, someone would love him. He was… very lovable, probably. Nick wouldn’t know.

Sabrina was loyal. She wouldn’t waver from Nick, even if she would never be quite as happy unless she had Harvey, too. Nick could be there for her, on his own. And surely she could reach glory, and Nick could be loved, and the mortal would be better off without magic and not tempted into dark or dangerous ways. The future could be turned into a different path, Nick knew that much. He hadn’t been able to imagine a better future than this one, but perhaps the other future would be an improvement. Would be the way things should be.

A different way of love, truer in the mortal way Sabrina believed in. Nick could win, and they could be happy.

That future would do. Would be far beyond his wildest dreams. But… this future was so dear, and strange.

He gazed up at her. From the first moment he saw her face, he hadn’t wanted any future without her in it.

Nick hardly dared say it. His voice cracked. “I—I dreamed of you, too.”

Sabrina smiled. “So, when we were broken up, and you told me off in a bar, and I thought we could be real to each other, as well as each other’s dreams? I loved you then. I was sure of you then. Only there was so much pain between us, and I hated you for hurting me, I didn’t know how to cross all the pain and resentment, or if I should just leave you alone. If I should leave you both alone, because I only ever hurt you and you were better off without me. That was the whole reason I did the candle spell.”

“The—” Nick began, but Sabrina was sweeping on, and what she said next shocked him silent.

“Everyone kept telling me I shouldn’t want both. Freedom and power. Harvey and Nick. But I did. I always wanted so much.”

Nick had wanted, too. But he shouldn’t. Especially not if it ended in disaster.

“I was always…” Nick cleared his throat. “I was so afraid you wouldn’t ever be happy without him.”

She looked down at him, her face grave. 

“I wouldn’t be,” said Sabrina. “Not completely. And I wouldn’t ever be entirely happy without you, either. I could do without both of you, if I had to, but I wouldn’t be heart-whole. Believe me. I love you, then and now. It was just that I didn’t know if I could have what I wanted, or if you really loved me back.”

How amazing, to have Sabrina Spellman, child of mortals and witches and heaven and hell, loving you. To be her dream. He could never deserve it, and never let it go.

He couldn’t go back, because what if he failed and lost her? And he couldn’t go back, because if he went missing they would rip apart the world until they found Nick of the future, and then he would kill the mortal.

This was his path. One last lie, to serve her and save him. Though even he was sick of lies.

So he took this silver moment where he didn’t have to lie, knelt down on the marble floor with her hand in his. She watched him from her perch on the kitchen island with her fierce gaze dimmed by tears, and there were tears in his eyes too.

“I’ve always believed you should have everything you want,” said Nick. “You’re many things, all beloved, and I’m a witch. What I tell you three times is true. I love you, Spellman. I love you. I love you.”

“I love you, Nick Scratch,” she told him, and smiled, and set a silvery heel against his shoulder. 

Nick leaned forward, and kissed up the soft pale line of her leg, and then bowed his head and kissed her some more. She tipped her head back and made a sound at the moon, not a howl but a long lovely moan of love, and it felt like Nick’s heart might burst out of his chest. 

Then he picked her up and spun her, her skirts around their waists, kissing her mouth so she could taste the salt of her from his lips, and neither of them were crying any longer.

He held Sabrina in his arms, his first love, his first dream, his truth amid all the falsehood, and laid her down on the moon-shining marble, and promised her silently it was the last lie.


End file.
